Character education has been an issues for a century and been reinforced by the Indonesian MOE. It comes up with degradation of moral value and character. I've been doing research by creating a framework for assessment and give a score of students' character in elementary students. The purpose is to map students with special needs and proportionally distribute those students in parallel levels, no class will have more special needs students. It works, and helps out the teacher give an objective assessment. I'm trying to build one for higher education that will be linked the characters such as soft skills that are needed by the industry, such as communication, discipline, trustworthiness, caring and teamwork. This will be called the student's character index and it will come up as another transcript like GPA. This will try to assure lectures also map a student's character not only academically.
Problems arise when trying to figure out how you can objectify something that is usually as subjective as character. I need your opinions and suggestions on this topic in order to broaden my views and enrich my research.
It is a good idea. I think higher education institutions can implement Student Chacacter Index. Why not? This index may take control of the process and create rich and character building experiences for all students.
It is a good idea. I think higher education institutions can implement Student Chacacter Index. Why not? This index may take control of the process and create rich and character building experiences for all students.
@Dony, You have given good explanation on character education. It was applied in high schools, but Your idea about SCI could be applied in higher education. I have found that Character Education exists in Santa Clara University.Curriculum, articles, cases, and links from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. The Center offers character education programs for communities that learn, live, pray, or work together.
http://cms.scu.edu/character/
One of the goals of education is to help students to integrate the society. The success of education might be linked to character education and individual personality profiles (e.g. more or less competitive, more or less empathy, etc.).
Can individual personality profiles with a biological basis be substantially changed through education?
It is an excellent idea of including students character index in higher education. It will produce not only highly qualified people but also people having strong character that would be a step towards a good society built up!!
I always think it's hard turning people into numbers. I'm always afraid of manipulations that bureaucrats can do with these indexes.
It's a good idea for sure but as you said, hard to measure something as subjective as character. The SIngapore MoE has an SME (Social and Moral Education) component and while there are various ways to assign scores for such things, many are actually not a real measure of character. For instance, there are students working in CIP (community involvement projects) because that helps them earn a few extra points for their extra curricular report, not essentially because they really feel the need to do something for someone. I would still support such CIP activities, because it is in real-world situations where character education truly occurs. In so far as grading or evaluating that is concerned, I still think it hard to quantify, at least to the extent of generating a GPA score. And as mentioned, grades attached to such things might make them want to do things for secondary reasons (good deeds but not for the sake of goodness).
A more flexible and geniune approach might be to have a character-feedback booth (actual or online) where students and teachers alike can voluntarily and democratically (and if desired, anonymously) put in their votes for acts of kindness or demonstration of life skills that they might have witnessed or received. These points may be hard to integrate into a point-based GPA but could certainly be part of a visible qualitative feedback that could be added to the transcript.
Systematic evaluation and quantification may have its benefits. The only problem is to comprehend the actual motives underlying sound behavior and to gauge how far these values are truly internalized.
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
The idea seems good at a first sight. I wonder if students' character index, was applied to Galois, the results would not be so nice. In general "...which promotes school practices by while school pupils become good people, good citizens." This goodness is something some other people decide. So a "good thing" may be "very bad" when applied inappropriately. The purpose of education is to make "free" and "creative" people and not machine-like "good" people.
Thanks all for the input, actually i've been put it in conference that is a visualization tools as dashboard information system for student character assesment.
There most argue with cons with reasonable argument as prof costas and prof beluco it enrich and warn more at some point of view through our the research, cons that admire n excelence come from prof monica, its sometime just to be anumber but not real good deed, quantifie it as gpa have to describe more on to skills more than character it self.
For pro's like prof kamal,prof jacic,prof judeh, marcel and amir might get my point of refering to quantifi the character related to soft skills that mostly need to be identified by industry,with the sci at least the industry have a first start process when they accepted students in their organization. As it skill which survive in working area is soft skill of attitude and behavior rather than high gpa.
Thoug i like what prof monica said true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. And prof costas, education purpose is to make free and creative people not machine-like good people.
At the turn of the 20th century, John Dewey and Horace Mann led movements to upgrade education, as religious training in public schools vehemently clashed with ideals associated with character training. Dewey’s progressive approach included instruction “marked by honesty, self-control, friendliness, decency, selflessness, fairness, respect, responsibility, compassion, loyalty, empathy, and a cooperative spirit” (Davis, 2006, p. 1).
Much literature attends to character education’s development and breeding within programs that promote academic achievement, long-term test scores, and classroom behavior, which agreeably perpetuate success in college and career. Usually slighted are the “softer” attributes of education, such as good character. Character education contends that the making of a good person is fostered by social equality. Milliren and Messer (2009) refer to Alfred Adler’s belief that acquiring character is a conscious effort made possible through pedagogy, when converted into use-able abilities and skills for both post-secondary college and career successes.Kevin C. Costley (2012) defines character education as “widely shared, pivotally important, core ethical values…[including] caring, honesty, fairness, responsibility, respect for self and others, diligence, a strong work ethic, and perseverance” (p. 1).
Costley (2012) continues, “students need [character] to function in school as well as outside of school” (p. 1). Brannon (2008) mentions, “character education programs have a postitive effect on achievement, classroom behaviors, and long-term test scores” (p. 2), as well as enhancing students’ awareness of sound ethics and positive social values learned outside of school. Lickona, et al (2007) in evaluating 11 principles of effective character, begin with this text: “There is no single effective character education, but there are some important basic principles” (p. 1) for students as they strive for good citizenship. Tony Sanchez (2005) illustrates character education as a “…long term process of helping young people develop good character, i.e., knowing , caring about,…values such as fairness, honesty, compassion, responsibility, and respect for self…” (p. 1). Davis (2006) asserts that morality, honesty, respect, responsibility, friendliness, and self-control are descriptors of good character. Additionally, the Josephson Institute (2009) ascribes to fairness, caring, trustworthiness, and citizenship, on its list of character descriptors, in the same way Milliren and Messer (2009) include cooperation, accomplishment, confidence, success, approachability, and self-respect, as “flavors-added”, to their collective character education keys.
In my research on how non-cognitive/soft skills are developed, shaped, and fostered in college prep programs for "disadvantaged" youth, I discovered that character is seldom used as a descriptor because its potential conflict between church and state.
Educating the character of the student is something that education must always do. Teachers have to educate and empower students to realize their future. But I think that classifying students with more indexes could create stereotypes.
Thank you for initiating a discussion so appropriate to the university reality
Congratulations for your research and thanks for your contributions.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Education
- Higher Education