Values and professional development: collaboration across programmes for shared understandings in a Scottish university

Community Education is a values-based form of practice, carried out in collaboration with the most marginalised, disadvantaged and oppressed groups in society (Ledwith, 2020: 59-60). In Scotland, professional status as a Community Education practitioner is attained through participation in values-based degree programmes validated by the Community Learning & Development Standards Council (CLD Standards Council Scotland, 2021).

This paper reports on the findings of a study exploring the role of values in professional qualifying courses taught within a School of Education and Social Work at a Scottish University. These courses include Community Education, Social Work, Initial Teacher Education and Educational Psychology, all of which subscribe to their own set of professional values accredited by their respective professional bodies.

The study aimed to enhance understanding of the way in which these courses draw on values-based pedagogy to incorporate professional values laid out in formal Standards by external professional bodies (Carr, 2011; Lovat, 2011; Scharf et al., 2019). The paper explores some of the common themes and differences in emphasis within the professional codes, and details some of the ways these are experienced (both by students and staff) and accommodated in the pedagogical approaches of staff collaborating in the delivery of these courses.