The Effects of Values Development Lessons on Pupils' Well-Being, Pleasure in School, Mutual Relationships, and on Pupils' Valuational Behavior during Classroom Dialogues

Values development was conceptualized as the systematic execution of four valuation processes by pupils. These processes were stimulated during especially designed lessons. Effects of values development lessons were investigated on pupils' self-report scores by a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest untreated control group design, and on pupils' valuation behaviors during values development dialogues in the experimental group. Experimental and control groups contained 27 and 21 classes respectively, with pupils' ages ranging from 10 to 15 years. Effects could be found only on behavioral measures. In the experimental group the predictability of scores from classroom behavior was also investigated. Pleasure in school and inner well-being in the classroom were predictable. It is suggested that effects on self-report measures were lacking because the negative aspects of classroom behavior outweigh positive aspects. Increasing the frequency of the valuation processes is recommended, for which a thorough teacher training program is needed.