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this report was made possible by a lead grant to cep from the john templeton foundation and with templeton foundation the generous support of 3m foundation the procter foundation procter company e frances g gamble company and john e and frances g epper pepper the character education partnership cep is a partnership nonpartisan national coalition of organizations and individuals based in washington dc dedicated to developing young people of good character who become responsible and caring citizens the university of missouri st louis umsl missouri-st louis college of education has the only endowed chair for character education umsl resources include the center for character and citizenship a character education library consisting of well over 10,000 resources related to the development of character in children adolescents and adults the what works in character education advisory board an interdisciplinary panel of national experts from character education and related disciplines and the equipment and facilities of the des lee technology learning center please send your comments to ph.d marvin berkowitz ph.d center for character and citizenship berkowitz@umsl.edu fax 314-516-7356 this publication is available from the partnership character education partnership 1025 connecticut ave suite 1011 washington dc 20036 202.296.7743 or 800.988.8081 fax 202.296.7779 www.character.org

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about the authors ii acknowledgements ii foreword iii introduction iv the what works in character education project 1 stage one defining the domain 1 stage two collecting and reviewing the research 2 stage three drawing conclusions 2 table 1 methodological criteria/scientific quality index 2 effective character education guidelines 3 effective character education programs 3 table 2 list of specific supported programs 4 common practices of effective programs 4 table 3 character education program elements 5 content areas 5 pedagogical strategies 7 common practices of grass-roots character education 9 effective individual practices 10 what character education affects 11 program chart 12-13 risk behavior pro-social competencies school-based outcomes general social-emotional table 4 variable outcome taxonomy 14-15 most commonly affected outcomes 16 most effectively affected outcomes hit rate 16 guidelines for effective practice 18 what we know 18 turbo-charging character education 20 considerations 22 conclusions 24 reference list 25 table of contents john e frances g pepper i

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators about the authors dr w dr marvin w berkowitz is the inaugural sanford n mcdonnell endowed professor of character education an co-director of the center for character and citizenship at the university of missouri-st louis formerly he was the inaugural ambassador holland h coors professor of character development at the us air force academy 1999 and professor of psychology 1979-1998 and director of the center for ethics studies at marquette university he earned his ph.d in lifespan developmental psychology at wayne state university in 1977 after which he served as a research associate at the center for moral development and education at harvard university 19771979 he has served as a visiting scholar at the max-planck-institute for human development and education in berlin the gordon cook foundation in scotland the university of fribourg switzerland azusa pacific university ca the university of south florida and the university of barcelona his research interests are character education moral development adolescent development and risk-taking he is author of parenting for good 2005 and more than 60 book chapters monographs and journal articles he has served as a board member of the character education partnership and is co-editor of the journal of research in character education dr dr melinda c bier is currently an affiliate assistant professor of education and administrator of the center for character and citizenship at the university of missouri-st louis her research interests are character development school reform and organizational change her dissertation on lowincome families use of home computers and high speed internet access won a national science foundation nsf dissertation improvement award and was highlighted in scholarly publications including nature and the scientist as well as national public radio and local newspapers she has been an advisor to the american association for the advancement of science and nsf on issues related to ethics in cyberspace and the use of human subjects in educational research as assistant director of the space coast center for excellence she was responsible for the daily operations of the florida department of education s regional professional development and resource center interpreting disseminating and supporting the implementation of both traditional and alternative methods of assessment and evaluation and coordinating teacher workshops and curriculum development she has published on the topics of character education ethical concerns in educational research and internet use by parents and community stakeholders acknowledgements the research for and writing of this report depended on the time and efforts of many we are grateful to all who contributed we would particularly like to thank the university of missouri ­ st louis and those affiliated with that institution who contributed to this project a special thanks to our expert panel members dr roger weissberg dr nancy guerra dr susan anderson dr william hansen and dr jere brophy thanks also to kevin ryan thomas lickona and cep staff members merle schwartz rosie slack and nel jackson special thanks to former cep executive director esther schaeffer this project would not have been possible without the support of the john templeton foundation the 3m foundation and the procter gamble company we are also grateful for the support of john e and frances g pepper ii

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foreword over 2000 years ago aristotle noted all adults involved with children either help or thwart children s growth and development whether we like it intend it or not the inescapable fact is this as adults involved intimately with children educators cannot avoid doing character education either intentionally or unintentionally teachers shape the formation of character in students simply by association through positive or negative example character education is thus not optional in the school it is inevitable and therefore merits intentional focus and priority status in the school character education is good practical politics it has been long recognized that self-governance itself depends upon the character of citizens plato acknowledged this when he crafted the blueprint for the republic the american founders repeatedly emphasized that our own national experiment would succeed or fail depending upon the character of its citizenry clearly perceiving education to be the vital foundation to selfgovernance and the success of our form of representative democracy bluntly stated the role of the schools in the formation of civic character is a vital national interest good character education is good education recent findings show that effective character education supports and enhances the academic goals of schools good character education promotes learning it is clear that just as we cannot avoid character education we cannot afford to implement it half-heartedly or wrong-headedly we need to take character education as seriously as we take academic education this raises important questions and concerns about the best way to go about incorporating character education into school life as interest in character education continues to rise educators face tough questions is character education a priority can they spare the time and resources from high stakes testing preparation to focus on character education how do they know what is effective practice in character education i.e what works in character education the following report what works in character education wwce represents an effort to uncover and synthesize existing scientific research on the effects of k-12 character education it is made up of a brief overview of the project a description of the main findings a set of guidelines on effective character education practice and some brief cautionary remarks regarding how to interpret these findings it is intended to provide practical advice for educators derived from a review of the research subsequent reports will more fully chronicle the scientific journey taken to reach these conclusions iii

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators introduction over the past few decades educators have become increasingly interested in implementing character education in their districts schools and classrooms and the pace of this expansion seems to be accelerating there is a rapidly growing but still quite inadequate level of funding available for both practice and research in character education there is also a bewildering variety of programs vendors consultants and concepts for educators to choose from in their search to improve their schools and positively impact the development and learning of their students nevertheless there is relatively little in the way of systematic scientific guidance to aid in navigating this profusion of options vying for the educator s attention and limited resources for this reason the character education partnership cep has joined with the john templeton foundation to review the existing research base on character education in order to determine what we know about what really works thus the central goal of this project funded by the templeton foundation and implemented by cep under the guidance of the two authors is to derive practical conclusions about character education implementation from the existing research literature this document is intended for educators it is not meant to be an exhaustive report on the methods we employed to reach our conclusions nor an extensive detailing of the different research studies from which our conclusions were drawn rather it is intended to provide practical advice derived from our review of the research subsequent reports will more fully chronicle the scientific journey we have taken to reach these conclusions what follows then is a brief overview of the what works in character education wwce project a description of the main findings and a set of guidelines on effective character education practice along with some cautions regarding how to interpret these findings before we turn to the nature and conclusions of the project we must begin with one important observation due to the nature of this project we are only able to reach conclusions about programs approaches and other materials that have been studied given the relatively nascent nature of research in character education there is much that has not yet been studied our task in this project was to discover and report what the existing research tells us we wish to remind the reader that there is a great deal of conventional wisdom out there about effective character education common sense and traditional notions of effective practice some of this conventional wisdom has been studied and will be discussed here much has not been studied this does not mean that such programs and/or strategies are not effective nor does it mean that they are effective it simply means that we do not know scientifically if they are effective or not we derive our conclusions from only those school-based programs with scientifically demonstrated positive student outcomes now we are ready to describe the what works in character education project and then to discuss our findings and conclusions iv

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the what works in character education project as mentioned above with funding from the john templeton foundation cep commissioned this project as a review of the research literature on character education for the purpose of generating 1 research-driven guidelines for character educators and 2 recommendations for needed future research in character education this report for practitioners focuses only on the first goal dr marvin w berkowitz was enlisted as the principal investigator of the project and dr melinda bier as the project director working closely with esther schaeffer former cep executive director and the cep staff we employed a three-stage strategy disciplined citizens association for supervision and curriculum development character education is the deliberate effort to develop good character based on core virtues that are good for the individual and good for society thomas lickona character education is any deliberate approach by which school personnel often in conjunction with parents and community members help children and youth become caring principled and responsible national commission on character education in order to identify our domain we generated a conceptual model to guide us this model makes the following assumptions character is a psychological construct that is the outcome of effective character education is the psychological development of students character education targets a particular subset of child development which we call character character is the composite of those psychological characteristics that impact the child s capacity and tendency to be an effective moral agent i.e to be socially and personally responsible ethical and self-managed character education then ought to be most effective if it relies predominantly on those social education and contextual processes that are known to significantly impact the psychological development of such characteristics we therefore included as character education any school-based k-12 initiatives either intended to promote stage one defining the domain recognizing that terminology would be a problem because many different labels are applied to similar endeavors we examined an extensive list of definitions of character education including character education is a national movement creating schools that foster ethical responsible and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character through emphasis on universal values that we all share it is the intentional proactive effort by schools districts and states to instill in their students important core ethical values such as caring honesty fairness responsibility and respect for self and others character education partnership character education is teaching children about basic human values including honesty kindness generosity courage freedom equality and respect the goal is to raise children to become morally responsible self 1

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators the development of some aspect of student character or for which some aspect of student character was measured as a relevant outcome variable this spans a range that includes drug and alcohol prevention violence prevention service learning and social emotional learning all of which feature initiatives that fit some or all of the definitions above we accordingly established an expert panel that was comprised of dr roger weissberg social emotional learning dr nancy guerra violence prevention dr susan anderson service learning dr william hansen drug and alcohol prevention and dr jere brophy teacher impact on student development an important result of this broad definition of character education is that much of the research included in this report does not use the term character those who define character education or character for that matter more narrowly may find this troubling however in reviewing this literature we have found that regardless of what one labels the enterprise character education social-emotional learning school-based prevention citizenship education etc the methods employed the under-girding theoretical justifications and the outcomes assessed are remarkably similar after all they are all school-based endeavors designed to help foster the positive table 1 pro-social moral and/or civic development of youth stage two collecting and reviewing the research many different strategies were employed here including electronic searches and referrals from our expert panel details will be available in a subsequent scientific report sta stage three conclusions drawing conclusions we identified 109 research studies concerning character education outcomes and evaluated each study for the scientific rigor of its research design see table 1 this resulted in a final set of studies representing 39 different character education programs/methods a program is a system for implementing character education a study is a research project evaluating a program some programs only have one such study while other programs have been evaluated multiple times with many studies in total there were 78 studies that we considered scientifically acceptable representing the 39 programs from that set we further narrowed it down to 33 programs that were deemed effective based on the 69 studies of those programs methodological criteria/scientific quality index rogram program study study designation ideal acceptable unacceptable 1 sample size 1 inadequate 2 marginal 3 adequate 2 comparison group 1 no comparison group 2 no assignment method 3 partial or unclear basis for assignment 4 random or matched assignment 3 longitudinal change assessment 1 no pretest assessment 2 pretest/posttest design but no delayed posttest 3 pretest/posttest design with delayed posttest 4 statistical tests of significance 1 no statistical tests 2 significance reported but statistical test not identified 3 statistical tests and significance reported 5 publication 1 unpublished with little methodological reporting 2 unpublished but with complete methodological report 3 peer reviewed 6 implementation 1 implementation unconfirmed 2 implementation assessed 2

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effective character education guidelines there are numerous ways to approach the task of reaching conclusions about what works in character education from the evidence we have gathered from the included studies one way is to look at which programs have research that demonstrates their effectiveness in other words which programs can we conclude actually work based on existing sound research a second way is to identify characteristics of effective character education programs what elements of practice do effective programs tend to share a third way is to look at character education that is generic homegrown not based on a commercially available program and examine if such programs are effective what do schools generally do that is effective in promoting character development yet a fourth way is to look at research into specific practices rather than as parts of full character education programs what are the effects of specific character education practices unfortunately while the first question is relatively easy to answer as there are many studies of specific character education programs the other three questions are much more difficult to answer nonetheless we will take each question in turn and then based on the answers to each question attempt to distill some common conclusions could identify only those studies that were scientifically acceptable for providing possible evidence of effectiveness in accordance with the standards for research in no child left behind only 39 of those programs had studies 78 that we considered scientifically acceptable first we selected programs with welldesigned research and then we looked to see what that research revealed about the effectiveness of the program under study in the end we identified 33 programs with scientific evidence supporting their effectiveness in promoting character development in students table 2 lists the 33 scientifically supported character education programs that we analyze in this report the range is quite large in terms of amount of research type of program implementation elements age/grade levels targeted and outcomes affected it is important to note that we have identified the grade levels for demonstrated effectiveness for each program in most cases however a program may apply to a wider range of grade levels but only have research for a subset we therefore are only reaching conclusions about the grade levels that have been studied for such programs table 2 indicates which grade levels elementary middle high school each program covers and which levels have actually been studied scientifically results indicate that practitioners in search of effective character education programs whether at the elementary middle or high school level have a large and diverse set of scientificallysupported options from which to select program developers may use these results as models for effective practice our goal was not to chronicle the implementation characteristics of each program which is beyond the scope of this report however this list overlaps significantly with the programs reviewed effective character education programs of the total number of programs and methods examined we identified 54 character education programs that had any research to back them up we then created a system for scoring the research designs and reports so we 3

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators by the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning casel in their safe and sound program review www.casel.org that review may be a helpful resource to garner more information on the implementation characteristics of the programs we have identified while most educators do not utilize pre-packaged programs but rather create their own character education programs this review may prove useful for educators interested in using wellestablished programs and for educators interested in using parts of established programs to create their own let s now turn to an examination of the strategies commonly used by effective programs 1 many of the research reports did not sufficiently elaborate on the content and pedagogical strategies of the program methods and we were not involved in an implementation review ­ again see the casel review safe and sound for supplemental implementation information 2 most programs employ many strategies and it is impossible to determine which ones account for the effectiveness of the programs because they have not been tested independently the conclusions in this section are therefore best understood as a general picture of the tendencies of the 33 effective programs we present here a basic description of the implementation strategies that were most prevalent among the effective programs we have identified in many cases we did not have enough information to be sure if an implementation strategy was really a substantial part of the program or if it common practices of effective programs having identified which programs appear to be effective we were interested in what implementation strategies those programs utilized this is challenging for two reasons table 2 suppor upported programs list of scientifically supported programs 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 across ages elementary middle middle all stars middle middle middle building decision skills with community service middle middle middle child development project elementary elementary elementary facing history and ourselves middle middle high great body shop elementary elementary elementary i can problem solve elementary elementary elementary just communities high high high learning for life elementary middle elementary elementary high life skills training elementary middle middle lift linking the interests of families and teachers elementary elementary elementary lions-quest elementary middle high elementary high elementary michigan model for comprehensive school health education elementary middle middle high moral dilemma discussion elementary elementary elementary high middle high open circle program reach out to schools elementary elementary elementary peacebuilders elementary elementary elementary peaceful schools project elementary elementary elementary elementary peacemakers elementary middle elementary middle positive action elementary middle high elementary elementary positive action through holistic education pathe middle high middle high 21 positive youth development middle middle middle 22 promoting alternative thinking strategies paths elementary elementary elementary 23 raising healthy children elementary elementary elementary middle high 24 resolving conflict creatively program rccp elementary middle elementary elementary 25 responding in peaceful positive ways middle ripp middle middle 26 roots of empathy elementary middle elementary elementary middle 27 seattle social development project elementary elementary elementary 28 second step elementary middle elementary elementary middle 29 social competence promotion program for young adolescence middle middle middle 30 social decision making problem solving sdm/ps elementary middle elementary elementary high high 31 teaching students to be peacemakers elementary middle high elementary high elementary 32 teen outreach middle high school school middle 33 the essential curriculum project essential elementary middle elementary elementary bold text indicates the level for which we analyzed research 4

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table 3 character education program character education pr ogram elements content elements 1 2 3 explicit character education programs 18 social and emotional curriculum 27 academic curriculum integration 14 pedagogical elements 4 5 direct teaching strategies 28 interactive teaching learning strategies 33 6 classroom behavior management strategies 15 7 school-wide or institutional organization 14 8 modeling mentoring 16 9 family/community participation 26 10 community service/service learning 8 11 professional development 33 social skills and awareness e.g communications skills active listening relationship skills assertiveness social awareness personal improvement/selfmanagement and awareness e.g self-control goal setting relaxation techniques self-awareness emotional awareness problem-solving/decision-making while all programs addressed some aspect of character development 18 programs self identified as character education were grounded in core universal values or explicitly targeted the moral/ethical development of students in addition 14 programs integrate character education into the core academic curriculum to some extent this was an especially tricky variable as most programs claim and have the potential to do this but closer inspection reveals that many are actually merely teaching character education during the course of the school day and not actually integrating it into academics of the 14 that do integrate the most common academic subject areas are language arts and social studies in order to better understand the nature of these program components representative examples follow below number in parentheses indicates the number of programs in which that element was included was what specific form it took and how extensively it was incorporated for example many programs claim to integrate character education into the curriculum few programs however document how they do it which subjects are included and how extensively it is done in order to paint this general picture we generated a list of prevalent program elements based both upon our knowledge of the field and the programs and corresponding research studies we examined this list includes 11 major elements three of the elements concern the content of character education implementation and eight concern the pedagogical strategies for implementing character education the major elements are presented in table 3 below we provide examples of the most prevalent implementation strategies awar wareness social skills and awareness sensitivity to and recognition of social cues and the requisite skills to deal with social situations are an important part of character the fostering of social skills and awareness takes a variety of forms the largest component of the life skills program training program covers social skills including using verbal and non-verbal communication cues to avoid misunderstandings students are taught strategies to overcome shyness including how to initiate social contacts give and receive compliments and to begin maintain and end conversations content areas of the three content areas the most common was social-emotional curricula with 27 of the 33 programs including some form of social-emotional curriculum these curricula most often included lessons in impr ement/selfmpro personal improvement/selfawar wareness management and awareness this category included programs that focused on the development of student competence in areas such as self 5

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators discipline goal setting stress management and achievement motivation for instance one of the basic principles of project essential is to strive to fulfill the obligations for which one is responsible thus learning to distinguish between those things that are one s responsibilities and those that are not is crucial students are taught self-discipline through the application of rational objective thought in a social decision making problem solving unit on self control students are taught how to set appropriate goals generate alternative strategies for achieving stated goals and monitor performance toward achieving goals in the peaceful project schools project students are taught relaxation exercises to help manage stress and anger such as the 12 core values that are the framework of the great body shop still shop other programs explicitly included goals related to student s ethical and or moral development such as building decision skills skills which provides an interactive model for teaching ethics in the classroom curriculum academic curriculum ntegration integration solving problem solving ecision-making decision-making many programs respond to the need for students to learn methods and strategies for effective problem-solving and decisionmaking in the 6th-grade curriculum for the peaceful positive ways responding in peaceful and positive ways program a social-cognitive problem-solving model is used in which the following steps are emphasized stop calm down identify the problem and your feelings about it decide among your options do it look back and evaluate each week one of the topics is discussed in detail stop and calm down sessions for example teach students about the relationship between physiology and emotions students are taught to identify physical manifestations of anger and anxiety and then how to calm down in various ways including breathing techniques programs were integrated into the academic curriculum to varying degrees the secondary program facing history and ourselves ourselves involves substantive courses through which students examine particular moments in history such as the years that led up to wwii in germany or the civil rights movement in the united states intense study of history as a moral enterprise helps students understand the legacies of prejudice and discrimination resilience and courage a different example comes from the elementary program peacemakers which is most often eacemakers incorporated into language arts this program includes specially written stories and writing activities including fictional characters that are learning the same skills as the students pedagogical strategies of the eight pedagogical elements the most prevalent at least 50 of the programs incorporate them are professional development for implementation 33 interactive teaching strategies 33 direct teaching strategies 28 family/community participation 26 modeling/mentoring 16 elf-identified self-identified as character education character education several of the programs for which we reviewed evaluation reports and supporting literature left no doubt that they not only addressed character development but identified themselves explicitly as character education programs for example positive action identifies itself as positive action the key to character strateother common pedagogical strategies also common although used by less than half the effective programs were the following pedagogical strategies classroom or behavior management strategies the most common forms were reward or recognition programs developmental discipline or positive classroom management and monitoring systems focus e xplicit focus on ethics values or ethics other programs did not necessarily self identify as character education and yet were grounded in the language of core values 6

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school wide strategies the most common forms were leadership individual or team and school-wide character education programs community service/service learning of these half were community service and half were service learning dev evelopment professional development professional development for those implementing the character education initiative may be critical while professional development is not often thought of as a pedagogical strategy it is essential for effective pedagogy a strong example of effective professional development activities are the six phases of the intervention training for peacebuilders a pre-intervention eacebuilders orientation exposes faculty to the program followed by a training workshop in which three to four hours of training are provided on the basic peacebuilders model then during the first 8-12 weeks of program implementation each school receives at least two hours per week of coaching in program implementation throughout the course of the program study sessions are provided for faculty on specific issues of concern to their schools such as cafeteria behaviors integration of geography studies for peacebuilders and management of eacebuilders difficult classrooms additionally two-hour periodic forums and one-day institutes are offered during which successes challenges and new materials and new interventions are discussed nteractiv teaching/lear active eaching/learning interactive teaching/learning trategies strategies the three most common forms of interactive strategies are peer discussions roleplaying opportunities and cooperative learning historically much of education has focused on teachers telling students what they need to know based on psychological research it has become clear that peer interaction is a powerful means to promote student learning and development peer discussions are used in a variety of forms in the effective programs the open circle curriculum for example calls for 15-30 minute meetings twice a week during which students move their chairs into an open circle that leaves one chair empty symboliz ing that there is always room for one more person teachers in roots of empathy use intrinsic motivation when students engage in peer discussions by thanking students for their contributions to the talk discussion activities are designed to help children work on consensus building and collaboration and students are able to contribute regardless of such things as their reading or math skills likewise the child development project project uses class meetings to build a sense of community they provide students with opportunities to contribute and take responsibility for how their classrooms feel and operate students use the meetings to discuss issues plan classroom activities problem-solve and set classroom goals discussions of moral dilemmas are widely moral used both alone moral dilemma discusdiscussions sions and in programs such as the just schools community schools in such discussions teachers facilitate whole classroom peer discussions of moral and ethical dilemmas and other ethical issues to teach awareness of pro-social norms the all stars program includes a session called the great debate during which students vote on how they feel about a particular position statement for example a statement might say if a boy pays for a date the girl should be romantic students then stand in separate sections of the classroom that represent their opinions agree disagree or not sure students engage in debate about why they took the position they did and are allowed after the debate to change their positions because a majority of students stand in a position representing a pro-social norm the program seeks to show students that others share their beliefs another powerful interactive strategy for helping students understand the complexity of social and moral issues is through taking the role of others different from themselves or through generally taking many different perspectives life skills training uses roletraining play techniques to help students overcome shyness by encouraging them to act the part of someone who is self-confident students write scripts for various social situations and then rehearse them in pairs in class they are taught to gradually advance by practicing first in easy situations and then working up to more difficult ones a common curriculum-based form is to have 7

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what works in character education a research-driven guide for educators students write e.g in journals from the perspective of a character in literature or history many effective programs incorporate cooperative learning techniques to foster individual accountability and equal opportunity for success the seattle social project development project groups students with different abilities and social backgrounds into teams that then work together and are graded as a group team scores however are based on individual students academic improvement over past performance in the project roject child development project cooperative learning techniques are used to teach students to work with partners in fair considerate and responsible ways teachers are instructed in the general principles of collaborative learning techniques and student activities are chosen that are inherently challenging and interesting so that no rewards for group participation or performance are required thus maximizing the intrinsic and minimizing the extrinsic motivations for participation and effort to help students resolve conflicts constructively teaching students to be peacepeace eacemakers focuses on creating a cooperative context in which all participants seek mutual goals students are taught to be cooperators rather than competitors and are instructed to recognize the legitimacy of each other s interests and to search for resolutions to conflicts that accommodate the needs of both sides one way the program implements a form of cooperative learning is through the use of academic controversy in this exercise students 1 prepare scholarly positions on an academic issue 2 advocate their position 3 refute the opposing position while rebutting criticism of their position 4 view the issue from both perspectives and 5 come to a consensus about their best reasoned judgment based on a synthesis of the two positions students thus learn to prepare present and defend a position take an opposing perspective make decisions based on the best information and reasoning from both sides and engage in a set of social skills such as criticizing ideas without criticizing people direct teaching str trategies direct teaching strategies in addition to interactive learning activities many programs included a significant amount of direct teaching strategies the most prevalent being whole class instruction/demonstration/speakers whole class instruction might take the form of classroom lectures given by the program facilitator or demonstration of technical skills or first hand accounts of various historical events in responding in peaceful and positive peaceful positive ways facilitators are provided with sample lectures introducing each curriculum lesson amily/community family/community articipation participation family and/or community participation forms were equally divided among three strategies active family or community involvement parent training and informing family and/or community educators often lament the fact that the academic and character lessons from school are not reinforced at home parent training is a common element in character education that can address this concern to facilitate the program s focus on promoting the development of strong family and school bonds the seattle social developdevelopproject ment project provides optional parental training seven sessions are offered to parents of students in 1st and 2nd grades on family management including appropriate forms of discipline families of 3rd and 4th grade students are offered four sessions about creating positive home learning environments helping their children develop math and reading skills supporting their children academically and communicating effectively with their children and their children s teachers families of 5th and 6th grade students are offered five sessions on enforcing drug resistance skills similarly the second step program offers a sixlesson video-based program for families who are taught the same skills that their children are being taught including empathy impulse control problem-solving and anger management the family guide includes an overview video three skillstraining videos and 25 sets of problemsolving and anger-management skill-step magnets 8

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the parental component of the linking families teachers the interests of families and teachers lift program focuses on helping create a home environment that fosters healthy discipline and supervision especially for atrisk youth in addition to basic parenting skills parents are instructed how to help their children develop positive peer relationships trouble-shoot plan negotiate and problem-solve parents meet once per week for six weeks with meetings held every weekday evening and one weekday afternoon to accommodate different family schedules meetings have been held in students schools to familiarize parents with the facility and free childcare has been provided the meetings include presentations videotaped scenarios to illustrate new skills role-play supplemental reading and home practice activities in addition each parent is called once per week to check on the progress of the home practice activities and to answer any of the parent s questions beyond training parents in character education skills many programs understand that families and communities represent resources to help with the school-based character education initiative the child project development project has home-side activities for grades k 5 these books provide teachers with activities for children to take home and complete in collaboration with a parent or caregiver they are designed to bring parents into their children s schoolwork through parent/child conversation the child development project also includes a component called at home in our schools this resource suggests whole-school activities such as creating a family heritage museum these activities are aimed at making families part of the school community another program positive action has both action a family and a community kit the family kit contains weekly lessons paralleling the school program with parent involvement activities the community kit has manuals and materials encouraging community involvement in schools and student/parent involvement in their community many programs keep parents and community members up to date and involved in the program through informational materials like periodic newsletters both open circle and second step make frequent newsletters to parents a staple of their program odeling/mentoring modeling/mentoring modeling and mentoring appeared in many different forms ­ there was no set recipe the most common form however was the incorporation of adult role models or literature based heroes facing history facing and ourselves uses historical examples of individuals who made positive differences in the lives of others students in teen outreach programs work alongside adult staff and volunteers from community social service organizations learning for life engages community role models to help students identify and develop the skills necessary to be successful in future career choices common practices of grassroots character education so far we have explored the first two questions posed above which programs seem to be effective at promoting student character and learning and which strategies they employ to do so now we can turn to the last two far less studied questions namely what we know about grass-roots character education and what we know about individual implementation strategies first we will address the grass-roots approach unfortunately there is very little information on what we are calling generic or grass roots character education this is true despite the fact that most of character education practice is of this home-grown variety schools teachers and/or districts typically create their own character education programs indeed many well-known character education initiatives such as character counts characterplus basic school counts characterplus plus ramework framework are really frameworks for local development of such initiatives these initiatives ultimately take a very wide variety of forms however little is known about whether they are effective or what strategies they employ the most recent round of federal funding for character education research character education partnership grants from the u.s department of educa.s tion tion promises to rectify this gap in research e.g one of the current federally funded projects by the cooperating school districts of greater st louis is a well-designed study of 9

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