The VIA inventory of strengths, positive youth development, and moral education

ABSTRACT

The VIA Inventory of Strengths and the VIA model were originally developed to assess and study 24 character strengths. In this paper, I discuss how the VIA Inventory and its character strength model can be applied to the field of moral education with moral philosophical considerations. First, I review previous factor analysis studies that have consistently reported factors containing candidates for moral virtues, and discuss the systematic structure and organization of VIA character strengths. Second, I discuss several issues related to the VIA model, including a lack of previous studies that directly support the moral justifiability of the model and the presence of a fundamental virtue component required for optimal moral functioning in virtue ethics, phronesis, practical wisdom, in the model. Finally, I propose future directions for research on the VIA model in order to address the aforementioned issues and facilitate the application of the model in moral education.

KEYWORDS:

• VIA model
• character strengths
• moral education
• phronesis
• factor analysis
• flourishing
• virtue
• Aristotelian moral philosophy

Acknowledgments

I thank Robert McGrath for his psychological comments and Joshua May for his philosophical comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. I also appreciate invaluable comments from the associate editor, Stephen Schueller, and anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.