Assessing virtue: measurement in moral education at home and abroad^*

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Second Annual Conference of the Jubilee Center for Character and Values (9–11 January 2014) at Oriel College, Oxford under a different title.

Abstract

How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies.

Keywords:

• Character education
• moral education
• virtue ethics
• measurement and evaluation
• educational assessment

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Second Annual Conference of the Jubilee Center for Character and Values (9–11 January 2014) at Oriel College, Oxford under a different title.

1. Of course, measurement in both senses entails one or another form of interpretation. The very framing of a research project, formulation of research questions, choice of research methodology and methods, collection and analysis of data, and formulation of conclusions all involve the exercise of judgment grounded in conceptions of social research and of a good society (Burbules et al. 2014). However, this does not mitigate the important distinction between thin and thick description that lies at the heart of the difference between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, or the necessity to employ the latter in the assessment of virtue even when the primary emphasis is on the former. Rather, it points to the conclusion already foreshadowed by Aristotle’s distinction between final and efficient causes that qualitative judgment is, in a significant sense, the more basic of the two methodologies (Alexander 2015, 69–85).

2. It also suggests a dynamic concept of tradition that engages alternative viewpoints, which follows MacIntyre’s critique of Burke (MacIntyre 1984, 244; Burke 1999; Alexander 2001, 145–150).

3. Taylor (1964, 1985a) made a similar distinction between behavior and activity that influenced Green (1964, 1971) on the difference between training and teaching.

4. Curren and Kotzee encourage mixed methods and offer several useful examples of how they might be employed in the evaluation of character education programs (280). This paper adds conceptual apparatus to justify and, under appropriate circumstances, require such collaborations.

5. This suggests a developmental trajectory to character education. As children become aware of their ability to exercise moral agency, they become more adept at engaging values and virtues in expansive ways that are norm generating not merely norm regarding. This requires maturity, so younger students need to be exposed to non-expansive character education in a tradition before being encouraged to engage those traditions expansively. But we should not underestimate the capacity of young children for moral understanding and innovation.

6. I call this nonindoctrinary expansive approach to character education, ‘pedagogy of difference.’ It requires initiation into a tradition of primary affiliation, on the one hand, along with a willingness to engage alternative perspectives, on the other, to maintain the possibility of independent moral agency based on a critical viewpoint (Alexander 2015, 87–138). It is possible to discern a tragic dimension to this pedagogic position. As they grow, children very often make moral decisions with which their parents or teachers disagree. This sort of independence is a hallmark of education as opposed to indoctrination. But it can also be a source of considerable intergenerational strife as one generation seeks to pass onto the next the moral truths it cherishes, while the new generation strives to strike out on its own.

7. Rawls (1993), for example, struggled unsuccessfully against the tendency for liberalism to become an exclusive comprehensive conception of the good (Macedo 1990; Tomasi 2001).

8. Concern for a common life in diverse democracies that is shared across difference is relevant to the evaluation as well as the design of character education and should be taken into account in assessment even if it is ignored in design.

9. Although evaluators need to properly understand the ethical tradition within which character education programs are designed (item 1), they may also consider broader moral perspectives in the assessment of programs, for example, whether they appropriately engage common as well as particular goods (item 2). Hence, the concept of the good that the evaluator should articulate and justify is an ethical frame for assessment not design of programs. When the two differ, the evaluator is obliged to comment on the disagreement and to justify his or her own stance.

10. The issue to be assessed qualitatively in this connection (measurement in the second sense) is the desirability, not the frequency of outcomes, which is a quantitative concern (measurement in the first sense).