Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The 'conversations' under investigation have all been initiated by the National Department of Education (DoE) and are identified in this thesis as the following: the Values Report (2000); Opening Pathways (2002), the Manifesto (2001); and the Baseline Report (2004). During 2000 the Minister of Education, who recognised the need for public discussion on values in education, appointed a working group to produce a document on values in education, namely the Values Report. That report proposed six values to be nurtured in schools. The DoE invited public comment on the Values Report and these comments were taken into account when a conference on values in education was held during February 2001, namely the Saamtrek Conference. Meanwhile, the DoE commissioned school-based research during 2000. The purpose of the research was to establish what meanings school communities assigned to the values that were proposed in the Values Report. The research findings were published in 2002, but an interim report, Opening Pathways, was published during 2001, and informed discussions at the Saamtrek Conference. The Manifesto was published later during 2001, and proposed ten values to be nurtured in schools. It also proposed sixteen educational strategies that could be employed to nurture these values. During 2004 the DoE again commissioned school-based research, the baseline research, which culminated in the Baseline Report. The purpose of the baseline research was to establish what were the perceptions and practices of school communities in respect of values and human rights. There was vigorous engagement with the issue of values in education during the first few years of the 21st century. During 2002 the DoE launched a Values in Education Programme of Action in order to promote the nurturing of values in education. One of the initiatives of this programme was the introduction of an Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) programme aimed at practising teachers. This was the ACE: Integrating values and human rights across the curriculum, which was funded by the DoE, and offered at various institutions of Higher Education from July 2003 to June 2005. There was less vigorous engagement with the issue of values in education after 2004, when a new Minister of Education was appointed. An example of less vigorous engagement with values in education is the following: the ACE on values and human rights was not state-funded beyond 2005. It is against this background that I engaged with the mentioned conversations about values in education. My interest in conversations about values in education arose out of my involvement, from 2003 to 2005, with the ACE programme on values and human rights which was offered by the University of the Western Cape. My thesis format differs from the majority of theses in this country since my research was entirely text-based, thus devoid of fieldwork. This thesis corresponds to what I have identified as a topic-based format. Each chapter, with the exclusion of the .introductory, research methodology and conclusions and recommendations chapters, investigates a specific topic that forms part of the conversations about values in education. My research data consisted of conversations about values in education as captured in the documents mentioned above, namely the Values Report. Opening Pathways, the Manifesto and the Baseline Report. My thesis does not have a separate literature review chapter. Neither does it have a chapter in which research findings are presented, analysed and discussed. Separate chapters on a review of the literature and on presentation, analysis and discussion of research findings are usually features of a thesis which relies for its data on fieldwork. However, a review of the literature and research findings are infused in five of the eight chapters that comprise this thesis. I made use of relevant literature in order to interrogate DoE conversations about values in education. That interrogation led me to arrive at research findings in respect of DoE conversations about values in education. My research methodology was located within a qualitative research paradigm, with an interpretive metatheoretical approach. I identified my research design as philosophy as social practice, and my research method as philosophical investigation. I undertook an investigation of the grammar of these conversations about values in education, that is, an investigation of the arguments provided by the DoE for claims made in respect of values in education. That investigation included the following: a clarification of assumptions underpinning DoE arguments; uncovering of DoE conceptions about the goals and purposes of schooling; establishing the extent of continuity amongst DoE conversations; highlighting the extent of conceptual clarity in DoE conversation; and exploring what meanings are assigned by the DoE to value concepts. The investigation of the grammar of the relevant DoE conversations illuminated DoE engagement with the following concepts: 'values', 'character', 'morality', 'conversation', 'education', 'inquiry', 'schooling', 'ethics', 'citizenship' and 'whole school'. In the process of this investigation I developed a conceptual framework for thinking about values in education, engaged with the notion of developing shared understandings in respect of values in education, drew attention to inquiry as a type of conversation that is conceptually linked to education, and investigated the notion of deliberation as a way of nurturing values in education.