The subject areas that form the HASS learning area are founded on and around ‘values’, and values underpin everything we do in educational settings. This is not surprising, given that values are at the core of our thinking and actions. As human beings, we have core values to which we subscribe – things that we think are of importance and of worth. These values are diverse and influenced by a complex relationship between the individual and their social environment. As an example, consider the values listed by Burgh, Field and Freakley: friendship, security, health, education, beauty, art and wealth. You may disagree and think that holding one or more of the values listed would not in fact lead to a good life; or that an important value is missing from this list; that is, we may disagree that each of these values is of importance. The point, however, is that ‘[e]veryone has values, but there is not universal agreement about what is valuable’. In this chapter, the use of a community of inquiry will be explored as a means of supporting meaningful values inquiry in HASS. The community of inquiry is an approach that empowers learners to think critically about issues pertaining to values, ethics and social justice in a safe environment that promotes diversity and student voice.

This chapter argues for an approach to teaching History rooted in the ethical position foundational to the discipline. That approach is based on respect for our students and for the discipline; in it instructors encounter and learn from their students in the same way that they encounter and learn from historical subjects, and instruction in History, just like research in History, focuses not on controlling outcomes but on engaging in an ethically authentic process. It offers six approaches to instruction that can help build this kind of relationship between instructors and students, and between students and the discipline. These include consulting our students regarding their interests and aims; building instruction around the process of inquiry; making pedagogical use both of the breadth of the discipline and of its complexity, diversity, and epistemological and methodological divisions; focusing on teaching analysis, critical thinking, and interpretation; and bringing students to see their engagement with History not only as a process by which they master specific bodies of knowledge and methods of thinking but also as an open-ended intellectual adventure.