Fundamental British values: your responsibility, to promote or not to promote?

Elton-Chalcraft, Sally ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3064-7249 , Revell, Lynn and Lander, Vini (2018) Fundamental British values: your responsibility, to promote or not to promote? In: Cooper, Hilary and Elton-Chalcraft, Sally, (eds.) Professional studies in primary education, third edition. SAGE Publishing, London, UK, pp. 339-356. Item availability may be restricted.

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Abstract

There is a phrase in the Teachers’ Standards that requires you to uphold public trust in the profession by ‘not undermining fundamental British values’ (DfE, 2012), and a policy document for schools that requires you to actively ‘promote fundamental British values’ (DfE, 2014). Fundamental British values are defined as ‘democracy, the Rule of Law, individual liberty and mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs’ (DfE, 2012, p. 10). In this chapter we encourage you to think about these requirements in a critical way, considering why you have been asked to promote FBV, and how you could, or indeed whether in fact you should, do this. The authors of this chapter undertook some research to uncover what teachers and student teachers thought about the introduction of promoting FBV and our findings are critical of this requirement (Elton-Chalcraft et al., 2017). In each of our universities, drawing on our findings, we have discussed issues such as ethnicity, inclusion and meeting the needs of black and minority ethnic (BME) children with our groups of student teachers. In this chapter we aim to engage you in a challenging debate to interrogate the implications of the requirements to promote FBV in schools and why this might be problematic or possibly even detrimental to learners, if not approached in a critical fashion. We conclude with suggestions, drawn from evidence-based practice, for a more appropriate way to promote a sense of unity and shared values in our communities, and address radicalisation issues, through work in schools that does not vilify groups or inculcate fear but rather encourages an exploration of difference and similarities within a critical but respectful context (Bryan and Revell, 2016; Revell and Elton-Chalcraft, 2016).

Item Type:	Book Section
Publisher:	SAGE Publishing
ISBN:	9781526409683
Departments:	Academic Departments > Institute of Education (IOE) > Initial Teacher Education (ITE) > Early Years and Primary Undergraduate Partnership QG
Depositing User:	Anna Lupton
Date Deposited:	01 Nov 2017 10:43
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2024 19:02
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/3372