Most schools already have clearly articulated values that guide their approach to learning, wellbeing and relationships. These values are reflected in school planning, classroom expectations, student leadership and the language used across the community.
The ongoing opportunity is to help students connect these shared values with the choices they make in everyday situations.
Inclusion, integrity and respect become meaningful when students can recognise how they influence group dynamics, relationships and participation. This might occur when students are negotiating different ideas, deciding how a group will work together, noticing who has not yet contributed or considering the impact of a choice on someone else.
Values education is therefore not separate from the daily life of a school. It is strengthened through consistent language, authentic opportunities to practise social and ethical decision making, and reflection on how individual actions contribute to the wider community.
The following considerations may support schools to reinforce this work across classroom, peer and whole-school contexts.
1. Develop a shared understanding of values in practice
Values such as inclusion, integrity and respect are broad concepts. Students may understand the words while interpreting their meaning differently across situations.
Creating opportunities to explore what a value looks, sounds and feels like can help establish a shared behavioural language. This is not about reducing values to a fixed set of rules. Rather, it gives students a practical reference point for considering how values may guide communication, decision making and relationships.
For example, respect may be evident when students engage thoughtfully with a different perspective, make space for others to contribute or communicate disagreement without diminishing another person. Inclusion may involve recognising different needs, adapting how a group works or actively supporting participation.
Making these connections explicit helps students move from knowing the language of values to applying it with increasing independence.
2. Recognise belonging as an everyday relational experience
Belonging is shaped through the accumulation of everyday interactions. It is strengthened when students experience being known, valued and able to participate meaningfully in their classroom and school community.
Many of the actions that build belonging are subtle: acknowledging another person’s contribution, creating space for a different idea, helping someone understand an unfamiliar routine or noticing when a student is positioned at the edge of a group.
Drawing attention to the impact of these actions can help students understand that inclusion is relational and collective. It is not simply about inviting someone to join an activity; it is also about creating conditions in which people feel their presence and contribution matter.
This reinforces the idea that every student can play a role in shaping a connected and inclusive school culture.
3. Extend respectful communication beyond agreed expectations
Students are generally familiar with expectations such as listening, taking turns and using respectful language. The deeper learning often occurs when they apply these expectations in situations involving competing ideas, frustration or uncertainty.
These moments provide opportunities to explore the purpose of respectful communication: not merely to maintain order, but to support understanding, preserve relationships and enable participation.
Reflection following collaborative work or disagreement can help students consider questions such as:
- What helped people feel heard?
- How did the way ideas were communicated affect the outcome?
- What allowed the group to continue working together?
- What might support a different approach next time?
This positions communication as a relational and problem-solving capability, rather than a set of isolated behaviours.
4. Create space for perspective taking in decisions about fairness
Fairness is often more complex than students initially expect. The same situation may be experienced differently depending on a person’s needs, role, previous experiences or level of participation.
Exploring multiple perspectives can help students recognise that fair decision making requires more than applying the same response to everyone. It may involve listening carefully, considering relevant circumstances and balancing the needs of individuals with those of the wider group.
Everyday situations involving shared resources, group responsibilities, game rules or competing preferences can provide authentic contexts for this thinking.
The purpose is not necessarily to reach one predetermined answer. It is to strengthen students’ capacity to explain their reasoning, consider the impact of different options and make choices that reflect both fairness and responsibility.
5. Strengthen students’ awareness of their contribution
Students influence school culture through the choices they make each day. Helping them recognise this influence can strengthen both agency and responsibility.
Reflection can draw attention to occasions when a student’s actions supported participation, strengthened a relationship, helped a group reach a decision or contributed to a positive environment. This enables students to see inclusion, integrity and respect as capabilities they are already developing, rather than qualities they either possess or lack.
It can also broaden students’ understanding of leadership. Leadership may be demonstrated by facilitating a group, but it is also evident when a student listens carefully, follows through on a commitment, supports another person or helps a group work constructively.
This strengths-based framing reinforces that every student has the capacity to make a positive contribution.
6. Build coherence across learning contexts
Values are more likely to become embedded when students encounter consistent concepts and language across different areas of school life.
Classroom learning, peer-led activities, playground conversations, student leadership and communication with families can each reinforce a shared understanding of inclusion, integrity and respect. The emphasis need not be identical in every setting, but students benefit when they can recognise the connection between them.
Teachers’ professional knowledge is central to making these links meaningful. The language, examples and level of reflection will vary depending on students’ ages, experiences and learning needs.
Peer-led learning can complement this work by providing an additional context in which students explore ideas, practise skills and learn with students from other year levels. Supported by teachers, these experiences can strengthen relationships across the school and provide authentic opportunities for student contribution.
Supporting students to live their values
Values education is most effective when it builds on the strengths already present within a school community. Students bring existing knowledge, experiences and capabilities to conversations about belonging, relationships and ethical choices.
The role of structured wellbeing learning is to help students examine these ideas more deeply, apply them in different contexts and recognise the influence they have on others.
Growing the Best Version of Me is a new eight-session primary module from Peer Support. Through structured, small-group activities led by trained Peer Leaders, students explore how inclusion, integrity and respect can guide their everyday choices and relationships.
The module supports the development of communication, empathy and perspective taking, relationship skills, decision making and positive leadership. It provides a structured opportunity for students to reflect on how their actions contribute to a respectful, inclusive and connected school community.
Peer Support member schools can access Growing the Best Version of Me through the member dashboard. Schools new to Peer Support can explore the module and learn how to join.
