You are a right Character! Character Education in Practice.

In September, 2018 my school made an application to join a strategic group of senior leaders working towards implementing ‘Character Education’ and ‘Wellbeing for Schools’. The strategic group, named ‘Route to Resilience’, was funded by the NHS and led by the director of Wellbeing Education – Steve Harris. A year later, our school was awarded an accreditation for our successful implementation of character education and its impact.

Character education has always been a minimal component of the National Curriculum, (2014) taught through SMSC (social, moral, spiritual and cultural education). Nevertheless, Character Education as a bespoke curricula movement is evolving within international and national education policy – see Character Education framework, Nov 2019.

The University of Birmingham’s research department for ‘character education’ (The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues) state ‘schools across the world increasingly understand the need to help their pupils to cultivate virtues at a young age’ (Arthur et al., 2015. p. 5). In 2008, a national organisation called the Character Education Partnership published a paper that divided character education into two categories: programs that develop ‘moral character’, which embodies ethical values…and those that address ‘performance character’.’ (Tough., 2013. P. 111). Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, founders of Kipp Academies, USA, devised a model of character education for their schools which stemmed from the work of Peterson et al, 2004. A ‘Character Education’ principle which cultivates a combination of virtues including performance character. Their schools have successfully raised attainment and the number of successful college applications accomplishing something thought impossible by predecessor leaders, who worked within the same neighbourhoods. Neighbourhoods which serve a community of high deprivation and immense criminal activity from adolescents. They both advocate the success of ‘Character Education’ at their schools. It is this form of Character Education which we have implemented, I wish to discuss during this session.

References:

Arthur, J., Kristjansson, K., Waler, D., Sanderse, W., Jones, C. Thoma, S., Curren, R., Roberts, M. (2015) ‘Character Education in UK Schools Research Report’. Birmingham: Jubilee Centre for Character and virtures

Dfe. (2019) Character Education Framework Guidance. UK: Dfe

Tough, P. (2013). How children Succeed. Confidence, Curiosity, and the Human Power of Character. United Kingdom: Random House.