What does character education mean to character education experts? A prototype analysis of expert opinions

ABSTRACT

Having an agreed-upon definition of character education would be useful for both researchers and practitioners in the field. However, even experts in character education disagree on how they would define it. We attempted to achieve greater conceptual clarity on this issue through a prototype analysis in which the features perceived as most central to character education were identified. In Study 1 (N = 77), we asked character education experts to enumerate features of character education. Based on these lists, we identified 30 features. In Study 2 (N = 101), experts assessed which features were central to character education through a categorization task. In Study 3 (N = 166), we assessed the extent of centrality using scalar items. We conclude by offering practical advice for the development of future character education studies and programs rooted in what is deemed central to such programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Character education
• prototype analysis
• moral education
• reaction time

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. One reviewer noted these instructions do not distinguish between character education as it is versus character education as it ought to be. We do not consider this distinction relevant in the context of prototype analysis, in that the goal is to identify features on which people judge whether a program is an exemplar of character education regardless of the degree to which programs actually demonstrate that feature. Other prototype development studies related to morally tinged constructs have similarly ignored this distinction (e.g., Kinsella et al., 2015; Lapsley & Lasky, 2001). One example that the results reflect is more than ought is noted in conclusion 6 in the Discussion.

Additional information

Funding

This work is part of a larger project done in collaboration with the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Robert E. McGrath

Robert E. McGrath is a professor of psychology at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. His primary research interests fall in the area of character and virtue. He maintains secondary research programs in psychological measurement and professional issues in psychology.

Hyemin Han

Hyemin Han is an assistant professor in educational psychology and educational neuroscience at the University of Alabama. His research interests include moral development, moral education, social neuroscience, and computational modeling.

Mitch Brown

Mitch Brown is an Instructor and Psychological Researcher at the University of Arkansas. His primary research area is in evolutionary psychology investigating how humans invoke tradeoffs between competing motivational states to facilitate reproductive and survival goals, which he primarily considers through face perception and mate preferences. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research scholar investigating the conceptualization and evaluation of character education.

Peter Meindl

Peter Meindl is Chair for Honor and Character Assessment & Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He studies virtue formation and assessment.