Integrated character learning benefits students, schools
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Every elementary school classroom is its own community, populated by students from diverse backgrounds. Creating the best climate for learning amidst so many developing personalities requires direction. How can teachers ensure their students value personal achievement, group cooperation, and mutual respect?
Professor Andrew Furco (organizational leadership, policy, and development), the University’s associate vice president for public engagement, is researching how infusing character education into a standard language arts curriculum might help. He discovered that character education—teaching children to conduct themselves with respect, integrity, responsibility, and civic awareness—can lead to better learning environments and may help students maintain positive behavior as they age.
Instructing children on positive character traits is not a new idea, but traditional approaches have not been widely successful. “Character education programs have not been very effective because they have been delivered and presented as a separate curriculum,” Furco says. “I would observe teachers saying, ‘Put away your math books; it’s now time to do character education.’ After spending about 10 minutes on character issues, they would say, ‘Now it’s time for reading.’ ”
In 2002, Furco was invited to work with Ginny Lee and Evan Goldberg, education specialists with the Alameda County Office of Education in California, who had developed Project Heart, Head, Hands (H3). Funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the program aligns character-based lesson plans with existing language arts curriculum. H3 also emphasizes social-emotional growth and character development through service-learning projects such as recycling programs and book and food drives.
What the Research Shows
Researchers gathered data on more than 6,000 third through sixth graders in 31 schools, with some studying the curriculum and others serving as control groups. They measured parental involvement, teacher perception of school climate, and academic and behavioral achievement. They also assessed retention of character assets—personality traits associated with positive development.
To measure character asset retention, researchers designed a survey based on the Search Institute’s Youth Development Asset instrument that asked students to indicate whether they agreed with such statements as, “I see many positive things in my life” and “When I fail at something, I keep trying until I get it right.” Students were then asked to rate how frequently they act on each of the 25 statements.
During the first phase of the research, Furco and his colleagues found that elementary school children progressively lose character assets as they age, with third graders reporting the highest levels of assets and sixth-graders the lowest. This does not necessarily mean that students become less responsible, respectful, or honest, Furco says. Instead he attributes the drop in character assets to younger children’s tendency to select responses that they think will please adults. “As children grow older, they become a bit more discerning and are more likely to offer responses that more closely reflect how they really feel,” Furco explains.
The results reveal that students who participated in the H3 program were better able to retain their character assets than those in the non-H3 control group. “The character assets of H3 students still dropped over time,” Furco says, “but not as much as if they had not been involved in the program. The study also found that the more H3 lessons the students were exposed to, the smaller the drop in character assets from the beginning to the end of the school year.
Researchers surveyed the level of community, trust, and respect shared within the teaching staff and between teachers and the administration. Teachers in the H3 schools observed a positive change in school climate, while the control schools reported no such change. “There was a significant difference between H3 and non-H3 schools,” Furco says.
What Others are Saying
The H3 program changes the way students communicate, says Linda Anderson, principal of Oliveira Elementary School, where the curriculum has been in place for seven years. “The verbiage, the language—you can hear it in the kids. They’ll stop; think about what they’re going to do before they do it. We’ve seen an increase in their social awareness and using words to solve problems.”
Parvin Ahmadi, who was assistant superintendent at Fremont Unified School District, where H3 was implemented across almost all of the schools, praises the curriculum’s service-learning component. “H3 put the social-emotional needs of the students on the forefront,” she says. “Service-learning became an important way to connect to others and the community—not just talking to students about their own character, but showing them how they could impact the community.” Ahmadi is now superintendent of schools in Pleasanton, California, where a citywide initiative is promoting six character traits from the curriculum.
Next Steps
Today the H3 program reaches about 25,000 students in more than 50 elementary schools. Furco, along with doctoral students Lisa Burton and Yongling Zhang, is analyzing data from the second phase of the study (2007–2010) to determine if earlier findings continue to hold true.
Through the University’s International Center for Research on Community Engagement, which he directs, Furco is designing a separate project to compare how preparation programs in a number of different countries prepare future teachers to use service-learning in the classroom.
For more information
Andrew Furco, 612-624-1562, afurco@umn.edu
Resources
Anderson, J.B. & Erickson, J.A. (2003) Service-learning in pre-service teacher education. Academic Exchange Quarterly. (Summer).
Berkowitz, M.W. & Bier M.C. (2004). Research based character education. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 591, 72-85.
Moely, B. E., Furco, A., & Reed, J. (2008). Charity and social change: The impact of individual preferences on service-learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service-Learning, 15(1), 37-48.
National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (2006). Impacts and Outcomes of Service-Learning in K-12 Settings: Selected Resources. Washington, D.C.: Corporation for National & Community Service.
Revised August 2010
