Community Learning Development Resource 602 – 08
CORE BELIEFS AND VALUES
SUMMARY
A resource which can be used to prompt reflection and discussion about core beliefs for community learning – individual, collective and community capacity building work.
EXAMPLE OF A SET OF CORE BELIEFS / VALUES – we believe:
- Equality underpins and informs all other values
- That Learning is the core process by which people change their behaviour
- Interventions and initiatives must be learner-centred and learner needs-led
- All individual have the capacity to learn
- Inclusion is a requirement and exclusion is an issue
- Potential for learner progression is a requirement
- Effective partnerships support effective working
- Learner empowerment is a key outcome
- Individual capacity building contributes to community development
- Quality Improvement is a continuing requirement.
PROMPTS AND QUESTIONS:
- If our own beliefs become set as the ideas, which shape and direct our work do they become our value set?
- Do we need to believe in and keep to a Value Set, which consistently informs and underpins our behaviour and practice?
- Do we have difficulty if our personal beliefs and values are in conflict with the values of the organisation we work for, with colleagues, or the learners we seek to relate to and work with?
- Does the nature of our working relationship with learners need to be founded on the core value of Equality?
- Does our value set needs to be shared and understood by those we work with?
- Should our value set provide the guide and the parameters of how we should be within our work, how we should be perceived by others, and how they can expect us to behave?
- Does successful work with learners rely on consistency that they can depend on within their relationship with us?
- If we do not have the same values as the learners we work with is how we manage the differences crucial?
- How does having a consistent value set that we believe in and relate to, support us when we feel that we are in conflict or crisis?
- Does having the consistency of our beliefs and values, mean that they can never change, or does it mean that any change needs to be a reflective thoughtful process, with time given to weighing up the implications and effects of change, on ourselves, as well as those we work with and for?
IN RELATION TO YOUR PRACTICE:
- Identify your fundamental beliefs. Do these connect with the core values of your organisation?
- Self-assess the beliefs/values of your organisation against the draft. (above)
- Agree a set of core values, for capacity coaching work with adults in the community and with other workers / agencies.
- Identify any issues and concerns, which might emerge from working within a core value framework, within your work area or organisation.