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Character Education and Moral Development of students ~
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Moral Teachers, Moral Students Weissbourd, R (2003), Educational Leadership, pp. Vol 60, No 6.
[Back to Articles]
Moral Teachers, Moral Students Weissbourd, R (2003), Educational Leadership, pp. Vol 60, No 6.
- Schools can best support students' moral development by helping teachers manage the stresses of their profession and by increasing teachers' capacity for reflection and empathy.
- There has been relatively little research on the contributions of school context to developmental outcomes. This study examined relationships between students' sense of the school as a community and their involvement in problem behaviors. The major finding was that, with several relevant student- and school-level characteristics controlled, schools with higher average sense-of-community scores had significantly lower average student drug use and delinquency. Caution is warranted in inferring causality, however, owing to the cross-sectional design. The findings suggest that school context may moderate relationships between individual risk and protective factors and developmental outcomes, and that schools that are experienced as communities may enhance students' resiliency.
- Though there has been increasing interest in character education among policy makers and education professionals many schools hesitate to do anything that might detract from their focus on increasing academic performance. The authors present evidence indicating that this may be misguided.
- In this paper, an argument will be advanced for the wedding of two disciplines: prevention science and character education. Both are relatively well-developed disciplines and arguing for the legitimacy of either one is not necessary. Rather it is the relation between them that requires justification. That is precisely what I will attempt to achieve here. First, I will argue that the focus of prevention science, especially as it relates to preventing undesirable child and adolescent behaviors, should be broad rather than narrow. In particular, I will focus predominantly on school-based efforts. Most of this argument, however, would also apply to community or family-based efforts. Second, I will argue for an overlap between what is commonly understood as character education and what is commonly understood as prevention. Lastly, I will offer evidence that will demonstrate the preventive value of character education.
- The following report, What Works in Character Education (WWCE) represents an effort to uncover and synthesize existing scientific research on the effects of K-12 character education. It is made up of a brief overview of the project, a description of the main findings, a set of guidelines on effective character education practice, and some brief cautionary remarks regarding how to interpret these findings. It is intended to provide practical advice for educators derived from a review of the research. Subsequent reports will more fully chronicle the scientific journey taken to reach these conclusions.
- Although moral development of children has long been ascribed predominantly to the effects of parenting, there has been little systematic examination of the specific nature of this relation. In this paper, we identify four foundational components of children’s moral development (social orientation, self-control, compliance, self-esteem) and four central aspects of moral functioning (empathy, conscience, moral reasoning, altruism). The parenting roots of each of these eight psychological characteristics are examined, and five core parenting processes (induction, nurturance, demandingness, modelling, democratic family process) that are related empirically to the development of these eight child characteristics are identified and discussed. Finally, we consider the implications of our analysis for teaching parents to influence positively their children’s moral development.
- Prosocial behavior - voluntary behavior intended to benefit another - is of obvious importance to the quality of interactions between individuals and among groups. However, scientists did not devote much attention to prosocial development prior to 1970, perhaps because the consequences of aggression, criminality, and immorality had greater salience for society.
- The process of empathy, which implies a shared interpersonal experience, is undoubtedly implicated in a number of important social behaviours, such as altruism, generosity, the regulation of aggression and social cognition.
- This article explores the theoretical foundations and practical application of Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (TIEL®), a pedagogical model that codifies a powerful way of thinking about the intellectual and social-emotional processes that underlie teaching and learning.
- A summary report of the Outcomes from the National Safe Schools Framework Best Practice Grants Programme (2004-2005)
Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education, Lickona, T., et al 2003 Character Education Partnership.
- There is no single script for effective character education, but there are some important basic principles. The following eleven principles serve as criteria that schools and other groups can use to plan a character education effort and to evaluate available character education programs, books, and curriculum resources.
The Big Picture of Positive Peer Relationships: What they are, Why they work and How Schools can Develop Them McGrath, H & Noble, T (2007), Paper presented at 3rd Annual NCAB Conference
‘Promoting Positive Relationships for Safer School Communities’, National Coalition against Bullying.
Moral and Character Development Vessels, G & Huitt, W (2005), Paper presented at the National Youth at Risk Conference, Savannah.