ABSTRACT
Values do not exist in isolation from the narratives in which they are embedded. This explains why narratives are important and provides the motivation for pursuing them. Narratives reflect what is deemed significant by a culture or community. They provide the frameworks for making meaning and for planning for the future. When there are changes, whether individual or societal (such as the pandemic), there need to be new or at least modified narratives. Resilience and effective coping with experience depend on being able to manage uncertainty as well as continuity. To foster this, it is not useful to have just a list of “essential values” for the curriculum. Educators and students need to be able to understand how a value is framed within a narrative, and therefore why it is meaningful, and they need to be equipped to sustain, or appropriately elaborate, the value narratives in order to maintain what is important to them and to their community. Students need the skills, and supportive environment, to be active agents in this process, not just passive recipients of conventional norms. This chapter explores these issues in the context of current global changes.
