Abstract
This study identifies the logic and approach of values education when teaching history and fostering values formation in a democratic society. Previous studies on this subject have proposed various ways of teaching history to avoid unintentional indoctrination. However, such theories fail to clarify the relationship between values and decision-making, and identify the connection of individual values formation when teaching history. Therefore, this study includes three points of significance. First, this study identifies the principle of content organization for comparing individual values formation with social value realization by introducing a theory on the creation of tentative knowledge of values through decision-making. The knowledge of values as tentative standards, which divide things into better or worse, could become an institutions or a law that stipulates our social life. In addition, due to, its vagueness, and contradictions, it can also be developed reflectively by examining its different standards and opposing viewpoints. Second, this study introduces a learning module for reflective values formation based on the four quadrants diagram, which enables students to understand the relationship and conflicts between basic principles in our society. By utilizing this diagram, which demonstrates opposing relationships between principles and institutions in the past, it can be shown that students reflect upon their own values and reexamine the justifiability of those principles and institutions by comparing majority or minority support. Third, to realize the learning module, this study develops a history unit for high school students that focuses on issues of race and ethnicity in the United States. By examining the effects of segmentations and institutionalization of values, especially with regard to race and conflict in a democratic society, we can develop the overall knowledge of student's values on multi-racial societies.
