Newswise — The University of Illinois at Chicago is at the forefront of a nationwide movement toward character education. Researchers have received a grant to help discover the best ways to teach character to school children at a time when students often lack positive role models.
"We're trying to go past just creating nice kids," said Larry Nucci, the grant's principal investigator. "We want kids who are nice and also capable of taking moral positions in life."
A two-year grant from the nonprofit Character Education Partnership will allow UIC's College of Education to incorporate character education into its undergraduate curriculum. Funding will help train a nucleus of 60 future elementary school teachers per year.
Nucci, UIC professor of educational psychology, said traditional moral and character education assumes that the way to have children become moral is to tell them what is right and wrong, read them stories with moral messages and reward them for good behavior.
"We now know that this approach is how to make a child a conformist, but not how to raise someone to be a moral person," he said. "We're teaching our undergrads how to help students become moral on their own rather than viewing children simply as passive recipients of adult wisdom."
Character education, a subject that often spurs a heated debate among parents and teachers, isn't about promoting anyone's political agenda or religious value system, Nucci said. "It's about developing basic human morality, fair treatment and respect for others, and the capacity to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence."
Such efforts can often lead to a decline in disciplinary problems like bullying, and more cooperation inside K-8 classrooms, he said.
The program is now in its second year. Last year, UIC researchers visited elementary schools, talked with teachers and evaluated how to expand character education within the university's teacher education program. This year, they've begun working with teachers-in-training on ways to mix character lessons with daily classroom instruction.
"Teacher training for character cuts across coursework in our teacher education program," Nucci said. "It includes basic information about children's moral and social development and social emotional learning. It also involves constructing moral lessons using the everyday curriculum, along with effective approaches to classroom management."
Interest in teaching children core ethical values like fairness and resolving conflict is gaining strength. About 40 states now mandate character education, according to estimates from the Jefferson Center for Character Education.
But despite its popularity, educators say part of the problem with character education is colleges of education are not teaching it, so school districts have to hire people to come in and conduct staff training. Character education experts say costs may be up to $5,000 for just a few days.
At UIC, students are being trained to teach values as a part of the natural teaching process. "If a school district values moral education, they'll already have teachers available who are capable of crafting character lessons as a regular part of teaching and at no additional cost," Nucci said.
UIC is one of only three universities nationwide participating in the Character Education Partnership project. Its College of Education faculty has an international reputation for research on children's moral development and one of the most established urban centers for character development in the country.
The UIC College of Education is recognized as one of the nation's top schools of education and is known for its high-quality teacher education programs. It is a leading provider of new teachers to CPS and has established partnerships of various types with many of the city's public schools. For more information about the UIC College of Education, visit http://www.uic.edu/educ
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