Home | Contact Us

Today's and Tomorrow's School Values

Day, C. (1999). 'The role of teachers in a learning society.' In C. Day (Ed.) Developing teachers: The challenges of lifelong learning. Educational Change and Development Series. Bristol: Falmer Press. ED 434 878.

Day (1999) documents a framework provided by Jerry Patterson, Superintendent of Schools in Wisconsin (1993, p. 7, cited in Day, 1999, pp. 199-200).

	Today's values	Tomorrow's values
1. Openness to participation	Our organisation values employees listening to the organisation's leaders and doing what the leaders tell them to do.	Our organisation values employees actively participating in any discussion or decision affecting them.
2. Openness to diversity	Our organisation values employees falling in line with the overall organisation direction.	Our organisation values diversity in perspectives leading to a deeper understanding of organisational reality and an enriched knowledge base for decision making.
3. Openness to conflict	Our organisation values employees communicating a climate of group harmony and happiness.	Our organisation values employees resolving a conflict in a healthy way that leads to stronger solutions for complex issues.
4. Openness to reflection	Our organisation values employees conveying a climate of decisiveness. Firm decisions are made and implemented without looking back.	Our organisation values employees reflecting on their own and others' thinking in order to achieve better organisational decisions.
5. Openness to mistakes	Our organisation values employees who make no mistakes and work as efficiently as possible.	Our organisation values employees who acknowledge their mistakes and learn from them.

Day proposes that, although these values were written in the context of school leadership, they might equally apply to classrooms, where learning is recognised as being non-linear, and where teachers and students act as learners and leaders.