ABSTRACT
The idea of discussion in the classroom is not unfamiliar to teachers, at least in Britain (though the practice may be less familiar than the idea). There is no subject in the curriculum in which a teacher may not on occasion initiate discussion between students either across the whole class or in smaller groups. Yet it is probably the case that most teachers have had little training specifically directed at this aspect of classroom activity.1 Since most teachers also will have had little systematic introduction to dealing with values in their teaching, discussion about values is likely to be an area in which teachers’ practice is informed more by whatever preconceptions they bring to their task than by any considered view of why there should be discussion of values and of what can come out of it.
