Moral-Character Development for Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

In this article the authors accept the common view that moral-character education is immanent to the life of classroom and schools and inevitable even when remanded to the hidden curriculum. Most schools claim to address the moral formation of students, and many educators enter the profession for values-laden reasons. Yet the language of values, virtues, morality, and character are notably absent from licensure and accreditation standards and so is formal training in moral-character education in schools of education. To facilitate the development of formal training in the moral work of teaching the authors organize the literature around three training objectives: Best Practice (“Good Learner”), Broad Character Education (“Fortified Good Learner”), and Intentional Moral-Character Education (“Moral Self”). Only the latter aims to move the Fortified Good Learner to the Moral Self and treats moral valuation as the explicit target of education. The authors make several suggestions for doing so and conclude with some challenges for teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral self
• character
• virtues
• character education
• best practice

Notes

1. By right relation Stengel and Tom (2006) mean relationships ordered by normative ethical considerations, including those that govern proper relations among teachers, administrators, parents, teachers, and peers, but also ethical considerations that arise in academic lessons about history (e.g., between Indians and settlers), social studies (political actors, the requirements of citizenry) or literatures (characters in fictional stories or poems).

2. Moral and character education can take different forms depending on paradigmatic allegiances, ranging from dilemma discussion to advance moral reasoning to explicit instruction about virtues. We endorse an integrative approach that elides these concerns (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Lapsley & Yeager, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Lapsley

Daniel Lapsley is the ACE Collegiate Professor of Psychology and Senior Academic Advisor for the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame.

Ryan Woodbury

Ryan Woodbury is a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of Notre Dame.