Values are central to individual development and societal cohesion, with schools playing a crucial role in transmitting them to younger generations. Despite formal values education in schools, limited research has addressed the factors potentially influencing value transmission within school systems.
This presentation introduces the collaborative research project, “The Formation of Children's Values in School: A Study on Value Development Among Primary School Children in Switzerland and the United Kingdom” (VALISE), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The study explores value development in primary school children, focusing on value priorities, structures, and potential influencing factors such as curriculum, school climate, classmates, and teachers.
The talk utilizes the longitudinal data comprising primary school children from Switzerland (N = 1342, 49 % girls, Mage = 6.82, SD = 0.50) that reported their values in four waves of data collection, the sample of Swiss primary school teachers (N = 118, 93.3% female, Mage = 38.33, SD = 13.04) and UK primary school teachers (N = 42, 88.5% female, Mage = 41.4 (SD = 12.67) as well as data from Round 10 of the European Social Survey (ESS ERIC, 2023).
Drawing on Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values (1992), the talk sheds light on value transmission processes within and between different levels of the school system, explores factors potentially influencing value transmission from society to schools, teachers, and classrooms, including a cross-national comparison of teachers in Switzerland and the UK. It further focuses on value transmission within classrooms and explores how classroom-related factors might influence children’s value trajectories during their first two years of primary school.
The talk concludes with evidence-based recommendations for educators and policymakers to enhance values education in schools and teacher training programs.
Open to all Social Sciences staff and students.
Event location
About the speakers
Elena Makarova
Elena Makarova is a Professor of Educational Sciences and Director of the Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of Basel. She received her PhD and her Venia Docendi at the University of Bern. She Makarova`s research interest includes topics such as acculturation and school adjustment of minority youth, gender and career choice, and value transmission in the family and school context. She authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and some special issues in leading educational journals. Her research is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality.
Ricarda Scholz-Kuhn
Ricarda Scholz-Kuhn is a research associate at the Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of Basel. Her doctoral research, which she recently completed, focused on children's value development, value-behavior relations and value transmission in schools. Scholz-Kuhn's research has implications for understanding value formation in educational contexts and may inform approaches to values education in primary schools.
Thomas P. Oeschger
Thomas P. Oeschger is a research associate and lecturer at the Institute for Educational Sciences of the University of Basel. His interests and research focus on values in school education, professionalization of teachers and performance measurement in the school context. In his doctoral thesis, he focused on value transmission processes within and between different levels of the school system.
