NEW PARADIGMS IN THE TEACHING OF VALUES
IN THE ASIAN UNIVERSITY SETTING
Cresilda M. Bragas, MBA
Introduction
The fast paced change of technological advancement and the issue of
globalization create a massive impact in many institutions especially in the area of
education; these factors paved way to new approaches and strategies in dealing
cultural diversity, social norms, business ethics, human behavior, and educational
values. These emerging challenges and opportunities have important implications for
education policy‐making and delivery, and need to be reflected in the shaping of both
national and international effort in educational development (UNESCO, 2014). In an
Asian region where values are important part of one’s existence, teaching values in the
Asian universities setting adopts new approaches to significantly embed and instil to the
students the values they shall practice on and off the university. The role of the
university teachers is very crucial in the transformation of these educational values to
students and must clearly understand the right standards in teaching these university
values with respect to the individual’s cultural diversity, race, gender, and religious
affiliation. As Yong Zhao stated in his book, Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? If you erase
those values, and you lose the creative power of a culture that celebrates diversity and
respects individuality. The size of Asia, where about 60 percent of the total world
population lives, is itself a problem. What can we take to be the values of so vast a
region, with such diversity? There are no quintessential values that apply to this
immensely large and heterogeneous population, that differentiate Asians as a group
from people in the rest of the world (Sen, 1997).
Educational values of Asian universities deeply rooted to many great Asian
leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Lee Kuan Yew, Ferdinand Marcos, Mao Zedong and
renowned philosophers like Confucius, Lao Tzu, Siddhartha Gautama among others.
The cultural legacy and philosophical values of these people reflected and practiced by
many universities through their values education thought by teachers in different
methodologies and styles in the classroom set up.
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The Educational System in Asia
The Philippines was one of the first to join in the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) when ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) agreement was originally
signed in 1992 in Singapore but in the case of our educational system, Philippines is the
last country of Asia to complete the last two years (or senior high school) of the world
standard 12-year Basic Education Program (Soliven, 2015).
The study of UNESCO Bangkok office in the educational system of ASEAN+6
countries which include 10 ASEAN member countries plus Australia, China, India,
Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea indicates the following:

All ASEAN+6 countries have a legal provision for free and compulsory education
for at least some levels of basic education.

Education system structures vary, however 6+3+3 is the most common in the
region, followed by a 6+4+2 system.

Most ASEAN+6 countries have decentralized some functions and responsibilities
to lower levels of administration but remain rather centralized, especially with
regard to standard setting and teacher management.

Many ASEAN+6 countries have promoted alternative education and the use of
equivalency programs, however the ways alternative learning programs are
organized, delivered and certified differ.

There is an increasing recognition of the association between quality of learning
outcomes and enabling factors for quality education such as curriculum and
assessment, quality assurance, teaching and learning time, language in
education policies and teacher quality.

Trends in Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) enrolment rates
vary across the region; in most countries, the share of TVET has tended to
decrease over the past decade. All ASEAN+6 countries recognize the
importance of TVET and many include it in their national socio‐economic
development plans, however TVET continues to be “unpopular” and the
demarcation between general and vocational education is increasingly blurred.
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
There are wide variances in the ways countries prepare their workforce and
perform educationally in TVET but most have attempted to put in place systems
for TVET quality assurance and qualifications frameworks.
The new paradigm shift in the educational system in the Asian region must also
determine by its educational values and how these values must infuse to the new breed
of future manpower and leaders of each nation. Asian universities should embrace new
educational structure to improve academic performance from high performing
educational systems like Japan, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea. Developing
Asia and the Pacific provides a rich array of technical and vocational education and
training (TVET) experiences, but too often these have recorded only modest results.
Examination of education systems in ASEAN+6 countries reveals a combination
of generally high performing By comparison, analysis provides greater scope for
understanding why an education system performs better in one country than in another.
At the same time, comparison also provides solid evidence and thus practical lessons to
help improve education system performance. To help inform this reflection, it is
important to examine the policies in any given education system, the ways in which they
interact and impact upon system performance and other underlying factors that may
inhibit or strengthen established policies (UNESCO, 2014).
Asian Educational Values: Its Meaning, Objectives, and Sources
Most people believed that education is the key to success considered as one of
the greatest fulfillments of a person because it has a greatest value in life. From the
point of view of the university, educational values referred to as activities that are good,
useful, and valuable to the students and has the power to modify the nature of
education.
According to J. Ruskin, “Education does not mean teaching people to
know that they do not know, it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave”.
Thus, the ultimate aim of education is to achieve good life.
The teaching of values in the Asian universities probably lies in the achievement
of its goal to offer quality education and produce achievers and professionals that can
help building nations and transform lives of many people in the country. Nikita Iyer in
her article devised certain methods to achieve goals and can be transformed into
values. She emphasized that in the field of education, values are important in reaching
one’s goals. The following is the illustration of the aims and objectives value education:
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**Illustration adopted from the article shared by Nikita Iyer, 2016
1. Developing character and morality. The university crafted its mission and visions
aligned in developing character and morality of students. For instance are the
Thomasian core values that emphasized Competence, Compassion and
Commitment while a Singaporean school’s goal is Educating Values-driven
Citizens with its core values “Nation before community and society above self.”
This is one of Singapore’s shared national values, which schools have been
trying to inculcate in to students.
2. Developing personality, health, and well-balanced personality. Most Asian
universities provide extra-curricular activities to improve socialization,
camaraderie, team work, individual behavior and health and wellness to
appreciate Asian educational system.
3. Developing cultural, spiritual values. The presence of long-standing religions
such as Islamic, Buddhist, Confucian, Christian and other divisions in the region
in highlights a strong connection to cultural orientation among Asian universities
and how teachers must in calculate spiritual values in their field of specialization.
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The practice of praying before and after class in most Catholic universities
cultivate a strong and deep spiritual values among students.
4. Developing habits of truthfulness, punctuality, honesty. These values must
always manifest in all aspects of students’ undertakings and their functions as
part of the university. It is important that these values must always practice in the
different academic activities by which students able to establish a life-long
appreciation of these values.
5. Developing ideas of responsible citizen. Educational institutions should not only
be confined its values to the academe but most importantly is to impart these
educational values to its external environment. The practice of corporate
citizenship also known as social responsibility must develop to the students
through environmental awareness, responsible use of technology, and
involvement of civic works to deeply value of their existence to the community
and become responsible citizens.
6. Developing values of democracy, secularism, equality, and scientific attitude.
Democracy in many different parts of Asia is a factor that can trigger educational
values because of its execution. Values can be manifested in democracy,
secularism, and equality in terms of religious preferences, customs, traditions,
and beliefs. Scientific attitude is a disposition to act in a certain way or
demonstration of feelings and/or thoughts with ethical considerations.
7. Developing vocational competence. The role of educators in developing
vocational competence of students depends on the knowledge he knows in the
field of his specialization and relevant industry qualifications. Many universities
today believed that an educator should also be a practitioner for him to be able to
teach well his students both on theoretical perspectives and practical
applications.
8. Developing positive adjustment. Inculcating values to students on the matter of
having positive judgment can be a great challenge nowadays because of the
birth of information technology. It provides voluminous information that is
sometimes irrelevant, confusing, and bias. It is therefore the role of the educator
to teach students the values of understanding, fairness, and sense of positive
adjustment that can have a good outcome to his well-being.
9. Developing social efficiency. The social efficiency ideology views education as
social process that propagates existing social functions. Bobbitt (1924) stated
that education is a social process of recivilizing, or civilizing anew, each
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generation. Educational institutions are vital in the formation and development of
social process because this is where values are learned and society must adhere
to educational values as part of social process.
10. Developing national integration. ASEAN integration paves ways to develop
national integration among nations. It is highly important and necessary in a
multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and multi-religion society to have not only economic
integration but most importantly the values integration that can be thought to any
form of religion, ethnicity, race, and culture. Developing national integration
requires also to develop integrated values that can conform to any person way of
living in the society. Nations must have universal values (Ferrer, 2013) in spite of
the relative cultural formulation-, which is clearly exemplified by values such as
love, peace or compassion, from all spiritual traditions and cultures.
Influence of Culture in Asian Values
The Asia Pacific Region is the most culturally, and racially diverse region in the
world, containing a rich tapestry of languages, religions, ethnicities and heritage
(UNECO, 2013). Culture in Asian region was greatly influenced by Western world. It is
said that most complex parts of Asian culture is the relationship between traditional
culture and the modern cultures which are primarily adapted to Western countries. The
impact of culture on the Asian educational values can be manifested on how universities
crafted its goals aligned specifically to what is the prevailing culture in the society. The
study of Milner (2001) discussed that even in the Philippines, after centuries of Spanish
and, later, American rule, there has been an academic endeavor to resist the Western
global, especially in the form of an attempt to re-establish dialogue with a pre-colonial
past. The written evidence of the 'Malayan' heritage of the Filipinos is being closely
examined with 'our so-called national culture that still emerging certain old values, or
key concepts located in the different Filipino languages, customs, and traditions that are
identified and practiced in many universities in the Philippines so as the different
universities in the Asian neighboring countries.
The embedded culture of students primarily rooted to how parents exposed them
in different cultural norms and traditions lived by with them. It is then the tasked of the
university and the educator to cultivate this culture with values formation. A set of
values is shared by people of many different nationalities and ethnicities living in East
Asia. Asian cultures are today usually associated solely with East and Southeast Asia.
These cultures are associated with Asian values that include a stress on the community
rather than the individual, the privileging of order and harmony over personal freedom,
refusal to compartmentalize religion away from other spheres of life, a particular
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emphasis on saving and thriftiness, an insistence on hard work, a respect for political
leadership, a belief that government and business need not necessarily be natural
adversaries, and an emphasis on family loyalty.
The Role of Educators in teaching Values
University has a big role in the values formation of students and these values can
only be transcended through its educators. They are very instrumental to inculcate
educational values. The role of educator in teaching values among university students
can be now more challenging because of the advent of technology that enable to
disseminate traditional human values and take for granted the importance of values in
the society and in education. The impression of studying to private school versus public
schools differ educational values. For example, the degree of reliance on private
academies is unprecedented in South Korea because most students believe school
teachers are less competent compared to teachers from a private academy.
Consequently, they focus more on studying at private academies than their normal
school. Some students even take a nap at school because they were up so late doing
homework for the private academies. Students do not worry about missing out on
school lectures as they have a chance to listen to similar lectures later at their private
academies. Teachers contribute more in the development of human values and improve
values education while learners should be at the center of educational processes,
teachers play critical roles as guides or learning facilitators.
The UNESCO-Apniev published a sourcebook in 2002 that helps university
teachers improve values education. These are the following approaches:

Teachers will have to look at education from very broad, flexible, and
interdisciplinary perspectives.

Teacher training will have to undergo major changes in both in contents and
methods.

Develop an intercultural education as an understanding of other people and an
appreciation of interdependence, in a spirit of respect for values of pluralism,
mutual understanding and peace;

Teach students the valuing process in the context of learning to be fully human
challenges the individual not to lose his or her self (soul); a self that is discerning
and empowered to define and not be defined.

Demonstrate the teaching-learning cycle of the valuing process starts with
knowing and understanding oneself and others, leading to the formation of a
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wholesome self-concept, a sense of identity, self-esteem, self-worth and selfconfidence, as well as a genuine respect for others.

Promote social cohesion through education, through the development of
citizenship education programs emphasizing core values (e.g. pluralism, human
rights, tolerance, participatory democracy, equality of opportunity, justice).
The educational values should be always emphasized in the learning outcomes of the
students. Teaching values in the university setting can also be an indicator of providing
quality education. The pursuit of excellence or quality has been a driving force in the
history of education, in both Asian and Western traditions. The concept and standards
of quality were set by the leading thinkers and teachers of their times in the context of
the prevailing ideas, ideals, values and norms, of their societies and cultures
(Quisumbing, 2001). Clearly, educational institutions and systems need to play vital and
catalytic roles in helping children, youth and adults to develop the understandings,
values, wisdom and courage to put this pledge into everyday practice. When an
increasing number of peoples, families, communities, nations and institutions or
organizations are empowered to transform a culture of violence at individual, family,
community, national, international and global levels of life, then we will have truly a
millennium, not just a decade, of peace and non-violence for the children of the world
(UNESCO, 2013). It may be stated in the Advisory Committee on Education for Peace,
Human Rights, Democracy, International Understanding and Tolerance (2000)
acknowledged that it is essential to teach children values for a culture of peace in the
university and for these to be incorporated in teaching materials. For this, the Advisory
Committee recommended that more importance be given to activities for the training of
teachers in inculcating educational values as part of curriculum that can establish a lifelong learning and values development among university students.
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References:
Advisory Committee on Education for Peace, Human Rights, Democracy, International Understanding
and Tolerance (2000). Tech Peace foundation
A Holistic Approach to Values Education for Human Development (2013). UNESCO- APNIEVE
Sourcebook 2. UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand
Koh, T. (1993). The 10 Values That Undergird East Asian Strength and Success. Published: December
11, 1993
Education Systems in ASEAN+6 Countries: A Comparative Analysis of Selected Educational Issues
(2014). Education Policy Research Series Discussion Document No. 5. UNESCO Bangkok, Thailand
Milner, A. (2001). What’s Happened to Asian Values?. Faculty of Asian Studies
Quisumbing, L. (2001). The Values/Attitudinal Dimension in Quality Education. Learning to be: A Holistic
Approach to Values Education for Human Development. UNESCO- APNIEVE Sourcebook 2. UNESCO
Bangkok, Thailand.
Sen, A. (1997). Asia as a Unit: Human Rights and Asian Values Sixteenth Annual Morgenthau Memorial
Lecture on Ethics and Foreign Policy, May 25, 1997
Soliven, P (2015). A Point of Awareness. Article in Philippine Star
Online
http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/education/educational-values-meaning-objectives-and-sources/84830/
www.philippinestar.com
www.singtech.nie.edu.ph
www.en.unesco.org
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