Character education programs—those seeking to influence students’ ethical sensibilities—are typically seen as a positive component of any K-12 curriculum. They look to promote honesty, integrity, ethical thought, reflection, and a host of other attributes that fall under the category of moral development. But what constitutes “character education,” and how do we know if such programs are successful?

Rebecca Dunning admits that the answers to these questions are not readily apparent. Dunning is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Duke University and coauthor of new research from the Kenan Institute for Ethics on moral development in schools and communities.

“The terms ‘character education’ and ‘moral development’ are ambiguous and used interchangeably, and there are all kinds of different programs that fall under the umbrella of one or the other,” she says.

Dunning, along with Institute Director Noah Pickus and Associate Director Suzanne Shanahan, recently completed a study that found that while there are hundreds if not thousands of character education programs in existence, it’s difficult to identify exactly how or if they make a difference. The study was based on a review of the Institute’s own middle school character education program piloted in North Carolina between 2005 and 2008.

The Institute’s program was designed to positively influence middle school environments by instilling a sense of individual personal responsibility and reflection and by encouraging civic engagement. The review found that the program met with high anecdotal success. Yet it also revealed the difficulty of determining the effect of not only the Institute’s program but of character education in schools overall, since even the largest programs with significant funding find it hard to measure impact quantitatively.

Such challenges are common for character education programs across the board, says Dunning. “Character education is truly a wonderful area of work and it involves so many great programs,” says Dunning, “but the field is still a mystery in terms of what programs work and exactly how they work.”

The study identifies three key challenges to the field and the areas in which significant questions remain: defining character education, program implementation, and determining and measuring program success.

The first challenge is in determining which programs constitute character education. Should a program whose focus is on improving students’ moral compass—looking at individual virtues like honesty or courage—fall under the same umbrella as one intent on correcting deviant behavior, such as drug use, teen pregnancy, or bullying? Dunning says that currently the field considers both types of programs—each with its own implementation practices and quantitative measurement possibilities—to be part of character education, making defining a successful approach that much more difficult.

The second challenge within the field of character education relates to the ways in which the actual programs are carried out. The majority of programs are targeted to individuals and are delivered via classroom lessons, Dunning says. This kind of implementation may be used because it’s easier to gather evaluation measurements from individuals in the form of post-program surveys and interviews, or because it’s easier to carry out this kind of program within the context of the K-12 curriculum.

Finally, defining success and determining how it’s measured stands as the third significant challenge to character education programs. “It’s easy to measure teen pregnancy, for example, so the off-the-shelf, individual-based character education program in the school that had a reduction in teen pregnancy gets nominated as a successful, ‘evidence-based’ program, even if it is not really much about moral development at all,” Dunning says.

When a program is termed as evidence-based and shows success based on narrowly defined objectives, whatever practices used in that particular program get written up as “best practices” for all character education programs, says Dunning. “We can’t rely on those practices to necessarily teach us how to accomplish moral development in youth in a broad way.”

The authors found, for example, that initiatives that are community- rather than individual-based may hold more promise in terms of helping students become good people. “We believe that character education programs should encourage students to build relationships within their own communities—their schools, their neighborhoods—as a way to show them that they can have a positive impact in the world,” Dunning says. “This kind of community-based approach has a greater potential to promote academic achievement, civic engagement, and an ethical sensibility that will travel with students beyond the bounds of the school.”

While the authors argue that communitybased measures offer better opportunities for helping students “become good by doing good,” they acknowledge that such initiatives may still face the same challenges within the character education field. They may be difficult to design and implement since they require ongoing support from members of the community, and they may be just as challenging when it comes to measuring success as other, more individualbased programs.

“Ultimately we’ve learned that character education remains a worthwhile undertaking, but we still have much more to learn about exactly how to define, implement, and evaluate such programs so they have the desired effect,” says Dunning. “As of yet, there are no easy answers for how to best engender a sense of collective responsibility and moral purpose in youth— objectives that we believe are at the heart of character education.”

— Aimee Rodriguez

WEB EXtRa: Read Dunning, Pickus, and Shanahan’s full study, Moral Development in Schools and Communities, at dukeethics.org.