Values education suggests a range of stances toward the broad goal of moral development in young people. It may express a desire for intentional education about values to complement education about facts or imply an insistence that education (and schooling) be viewed as value-laden. Some would argue that the term is redundant, that education is always about values.

Values education is also used today throughout the English-speaking world as a synonym for character education, broadly construed as the inculcation or development of prosocial character traits in children and adolescents. As a distinctive approach to moral education, however, values education is typically associated with values clarification and, less often, with a family of other efforts that share a focus on critical reflection in the process of moral ...