Values Education as the Daily Fostering of School Rules

This article reports an overview of the findings from an ethnographic research project conducted in two Swedish primary schools with the aim of exploring values education that takes place in day-to-day interactions of teachers and students. Teachers' main concern in their practice of values education is to attempt to teach students to be nice and kind to others, to behave well, and to understand and follow rules. The analysis of the rules resulted in five rule categories: relational rules, structuring rules, protecting rules, personal rules and etiquette rules. According to the findings, four main intervention strategies are used by the teachers within the everyday rule practice: assertion, explanation, negotiation and preparation. Even if students to a great degree accept and have confidence in school rules and teachers' way of upholding them, the findings also show that many of them are critical of some teacher behaviours and rules.