Character education programs in elementary schools are believed to be important for fostering moral development and preparing children to thrive in civil society. Character develops through social relationships across contexts. However, transgressions, such as school bullying, threaten the relationships that foster character development.…

A strong value system and work ethic have always been a part of the schools in the community in northeast Kansas, but it was not until 2012 that the school staff began to initiate an organized comprehensive plan and approach to teaching character education and making it a viable part of the school culture at Nemaha Central Elementary and Middle…

Liberty Elementary School is a school of 1,110 kindergarten through fifth-grade students in Canton, Georgia. As a 2018 National School of Character, Liberty Elementary is continuously working to maintain a culture of character while celebrating being only the third school in Georgia to be named a National School of Character. In this article, the…

"Working together for every child, every day," Beasley Elementary School's mission/motto embraces the philosophy of developing core ethical values and critical thinking of students. Beasley Elementary is a public school in Missouri with diverse demographics. In the last 5 years, students have faced many challenges at home that make…

From the beginning, Sheridan, an independent K-8 progressive school founded in Washington, D.C., in 1927, has had a fierce commitment to both equity and diversity. In keeping with Principle 7 of the "The 11 Principles of Character Framework" (Character.org, 2018), which relates to fostering students' self-motivation, Sheridan educators…

North Salisbury Elementary School (NSS) is located in Salisbury, Maryland, and has the distinction of being a school that serves dual academic programs. The school serves a traditional population of students who live within the school's district, and it also serves the high performing students in the Magnet program, an accelerated academic…

The article aims to contextualize and summarize essential findings from the 268-page Australian Government Report titled, "Project to Test and Measure the Impact of Values Education on Student Effects and School Ambience." The project was one of a number of values education projects funded by the Government from 2003 to 2010 under the…

The current pedagogy in creating a positive school climate is building personal relationships with students. Teachers and students work together to create a safe environment where students engage in the academic pursuit of knowledge. Service-learning projects that create this close bond and offer a collective pursuit of helping others give…

Norwood Elementary, a Title I science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) school in Baltimore County, MD, recently realized that traditional behavior management programs and processes were not working with their students. Over time, school administrators discovered more successful approaches, and restorative practices became the way to…

Conceptualizing character from a relational developmental systems metatheory, this study utilizes a person- oriented approach to examine profiles of character strengths in children and adolescents. Using Q sort methodology, 90 youth (Mage = 13.0, 51% female) sorted 12 character strengths based on how much each strength represented them. Using Q…

This article argues that C.S. Lewis is a highly relevant but largely neglected character educator for 21st century schools characterized by diversity. We make the case for the objective reality of Lewis's Tao, the moral law recognized in the moral precepts of a wide range of cultures and traditions. We show why these universal precepts are…

The study explored whether aspects of elementary students' writing about their personal values could predict if students were considered more at risk or more resilient. Essays from 176 fifth-grade students (79.54% African American, 20.46% Hispanic) from a low-income, urban district in New Jersey were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word…

Russ Sojourner is the Schools of Character Director for the Character Education Partnership (CEP) in Washington, DC. In this article he begins by saying that Daniel Lapsley and Charles Murray's articles presented in this issue of "Journal of Character Education" are clearly concerned about the compelling (and daunting) challenges facing…