‘Strong in Will but Weak in Power’: University Teachers' Perceived Values and Pedagogical Approaches to Values Education

ABSTRACT This qualitative study investigated university teachers' value perceptions and pedagogical approaches to values education. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews, classroom observations and document analysis with 10 Chinese university teachers, the study identified five main value types emphasised by the participants (i.e., benevolence, security, tradition, conformity and self‐direction values) and three approaches adopted in values education (i.e., traditional, constructivist and critical approaches). The findings show that university teachers actively incorporated curricular values into their teaching and enacted these values through their own interpretations and pedagogical decisions. However, their practices displayed an imbalanced pedagogical pattern, characterised by relatively extensive content knowledge but less developed pedagogical content knowledge related to values education. These findings further highlight teachers' struggling agency in a standardised accountability context, where insufficient professional support constrained their capacity to enact values education in pedagogically meaningful ways. The study offers implications for values education reform and teacher development in higher education institutions.