Abstract
Character Education initiatives within schools have gained both
proponents and opponents over recent years and continue to garner mixed
reviews. Proponents argue that the need is urgent and the increasing
level of school disruption, antisocial behavior and violence requires a
focus on values/virtues/moral education and claim this is synonymous
with good practice in education. Opponents ask, whose values will be
taught and how does this address the needs of our multicultural reality?
While others claim that, many initiatives embrace moral education
delivered in a behaviorist fashion promoting control by other and lack a
humanistic understanding of the pluralistic nature of modern society.
This review addresses these issues by exploring, critically
interpreting, and synthesizing educational and psychological research.
The aim being to develop a definition of character education that is not
confined to antiquated understandings of ethnocentric non-negotiable
ideological values/virtues/morals. The main focus of the review being to
inform a unified theory of character education embedded in a
sociocultural understanding of personality development that can inform
practice in multicultural settings. By developing a research informed
discussion of characteristics beneficial to life outcomes a theory of
integrative character education is offered.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 44-74 |
Number of pages | 31 |
Journal | Multicultural Education Review |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 13 Feb 2017 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2017 |
Keywords
- Character Education
- Antisocial Behavior
- Prosocial Development
- Personality
- Five Factor Model