The increase in violence in the public schools has caused many school officials to examine  why it occurs. According to Bulach (in press, 2000), bullying behavior is thought to be one of the major causes of violence in the school setting. The two students who were involved in the Columbine High School shootings were often subjected to teasing according to press reports. The student who killed other students at a Paducah, Kentucky middle school was also the subject of frequent teasing by his peers. The school bully (in press) from a Cherokee County middle school in Georgia, according to newspaper reports, struck a fellow student after exiting from the school bus and killed him. Bullying behavior occurs outside the school setting as well. The Sunday issue of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution featured an article (Joyner, 1999) on bullying behavior. A quote from that article was as follows: “Bullying–one of the most insidious and fastest-growing forms of workplace violence–is on the rise worldwide . . . ” (p. 1—Section R-1)

Clearly there is a need in our society and at the school setting to curb violence and to have citizens and students practice behaviors that are of a more civil/moral nature than currently is the pattern. If students practice behaviors associated with forgiveness, sympathy, and kindness, bullying behavior should decrease. This pattern of harmful behavior has been attributed to the breakdown of the family and the lack of moral training in the home. As a result, more and more school systems are introducing curriculums to address this concern. This training is often called character education. The citizens of some school systems have objected to this process because the desired character traits are often in the eyes of the beholder, i.e., one community may emphasize character traits that are not valued by citizens of another community. Consequently, school officials need to ascertain those characteristics that are valued by their community to avoid this problem.  Further, they need to determine the extent to which these characteristics are present or lacking in the student body. For example, if a characteristic is already present, there is no need to teach it.

Purpose/problem Statement

The October 27, 1997 issue of Business Week, in addition to having a wealth of information on character education programs, posed two similar problems as follows: (1) whose values should be taught? and (2) the insistence of educators that character is too complex an issue to be measured accurately. The purpose of this research was to address these two concerns; to describe a process for determining those traits that should be taught; and to develop a survey instrument to measure the degree to which behaviors associated with the identified traits are present or absent.

A character trait/value according to Bulach (in press) is something that comes into play whenever the golden rule has been applied.  In other words, it is something that deals with a person's relationship with others. However, he also believes that there is a self component for some character values, e.g., persistence.  Consequently, he defined a character trait as an intrinsic attitude or belief that determines a person's behavior in relation to other people and in relation to self.   Character values such as sportsmanship, generosity, courtesy, and empathy  would have behaviors associated with those values that would be easily observable in relation to other people.   Character values such as persistence, motivation, self respect, and self control would have behaviors associated with those values that would relate more to self and not be so easily observable.

The process for determining the character traits valued by a community consisted of an extensive survey of parents, teachers, and clergy in a K-12 school system near Atlanta, Georgia.  They were asked to list those traits they thought should be taught in their school systems. These data were analyzed for the frequency with which each trait was listed.  Based on frequency data, 27 traits were identified as valued by the community. These were consolidated/grouped into 16 character traits because a number of them overlapped, e.g., responsibility/dependability/accountability. The teachers, parents, and clergy were then asked to rank these 16 traits from most important to least important. This process is described in more detail by Bulach (1999).

Teachers and parents at all grade levels were in agreement on the three most important character values to teach.  They were the following: (1) respect for self, others and property, (2) honesty, and (3) self control/discipline.  The top three for the clergy were the following: (1) perseverance/diligence, (2) motivation, and (3) empathy, with respect coming in fourth. The remaining 13, ranked in order of importance, were as follows:  cooperation,  responsibility/dependability/accountability,integrity/fairness, kindness,  forgiveness, perseverance/diligence/motivation, compassion/empathy, courtesy/politeness, patriotism/ citizenship, tolerance of diversity, humility, generosity/charity, and sportsmanship.

In order to accomplish the second purpose (develop an instrument), 130 teachers (K-12) were asked to list those behaviors they would see if a student modeled or did not model those character traits. Frequency data were again used to select behaviors that could be used in a survey to determine the presence or absence of these character traits. The reading level of the elementary version of this instrument is suitable for 4^th and 5^th grade students, but is too difficult for primary grade students. The middle and high school version has one item dealing with sexual activity that was removed from the elementary version. School officials did not believe it was necessary to ask elementary students about perceived sexual activity.

The instrument provides a measure of 96 behaviors associated with 16 character traits. It can be used to have teachers describe their perceptions of students’ behavior on each of the items or it can be used to have the students describe their perceptions of students’ behavior. In the pilot study (Bulach and Butler, 2002) students (462) and teachers (130) responded to each of the 96 behaviors on a five-point Likert scale ranging from "never" to "always." “Never was scored as a “one” and “always” was scored as a “five.”  For example, one of the behaviors is: “They think it is okay to do something as long as they don't get caught.” The instructions tell them to choose the response which comes closest to the behavior that describes what you think other students do or think.  Forty of the items are stated negatively and are reverse scored. See Appendix A for a grouping of the 96 behaviors according to the character trait represented by those behaviors. All negative behaviors are underlined to assist with reading the data.

            A Cronbach alpha was used to measure the internal consistency/reliability of the instrument.  The reliability coefficient involving 222 high school students was .96, for 210 junior highs school students it was also .96 and for 30 third grade students it was .97 (Bulach and Butler, 2002).

 

The instrument has construct validity only for those behaviors identified for that character trait.  It is possible that there are other behaviors associated with a character trait that were not measured.  Consequently, a student could be honest on the five behaviors listed for honesty and be dishonest on some other behavior not measured by the instrument.  A further constraint on validity, is that students report only on what they think other students do or think.  Their perception could be inaccurate. 

Another factor that could affect the validity of the instrument could be the racial/ethnic composition of the student body/community. The racial composition of  the students in this study was 39% Afro-American, 52% Caucasian, and 9% other. It is believed that the instrument is a valid measure of student behavior in a racially mixed school or a Caucasian or Afro-American school. The instrument has not been used in a school with a heavy Latino or Asian population.

 In the pilot study (Bulach and Butler, 2002), data were gathered from both teachers and students. The students at the elementary level tended to be slightly more positive than teachers about students’ behavior, while the reverse occurred at the middle and high school level, i.e.,  teachers were more positive than the students.  The differences were slight, however, and were not statistically significant.  It is recommended that decisions be based on student data because these data are believed to be a more valid measure of what really occurs regarding student behavior. Students are more likely to know what goes on in bathrooms, hallways, and buses or when teachers’ backs are turned, whereas teachers are less likely to know. Brendtro (2001) reported that thousands of students are bullied and teased each day and teachers intervene in only one out of 25 episodes. Either teachers do not see what is going on, or do not care! Data can be collected from both and compared, but I prefer to believe they do not see what is going on, and that is why data should be collected from students and not teachers.

The instrument has been used at the elementary, middle, and high school levels for a total of 25 schools, and it does discriminate between students exposed to a character education curriculum and those who are not. Students who are exposed to a character education curriculums have more positive scores. For example, students in a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) have significantly higher scores than students in the same school who are not in the JROTC program (Bulach, 2002). For example, JROTC students had a score of 3.43 on the character trait “Courtesy/politeness” compared to the rest of the student body with a score of 2.65. The 3.43 score indicated that JROTC students are more courteous and polite while the rest of the student body with a score of 2.65 were less courteous and polite.  The same pattern occurred for each of the other 15 character traits.

The implications of the above finding should send a signal to school officials.

 

According to Bulach (2002)

 

The change in emphasis for character education programs in the regular school setting versus the JROTC setting is very different. Character education programs in the regular setting tend to be knowledge or cognitively based while the JROTC curriculum tends to be behavior based. In the normal school setting, there tends to be a character word of the week or month and everyone devotes some time during the day to studying about that word. They may read stories or listen to songs that are examples of that word. For example, if the word were “dependable” they might listen to the song “Lean on me” by Al Jarreau or be asked to think of three words that describe tolerance and share them. In the JROTC program, they might study what the word means, but the major emphasis would be watching for behaviors that indicate dependability. If they are not in formation,  in class on time, do not bring their homework, etc. they receive demerits. Further, peer pressure from upperclassmen reinforces desired behaviors. According to Williams (2000), the desired behavior must be modeled by everyone if the character education program is going to be effective, and this does occur in this JROTC program (p.9).

 

Implementation Suggestions

An effective character education program involves the entire faculty, staff, parents and community. Cooks, custodians, and bus drivers, as well as the teachers, parents, and community must be involved if student behaviors are to be positively impacted. The current practice of the character trait of the week or the month such as “respect” is not working because the word has a different meaning for each person involved. Consequently, the student gets mixed messages about the trait. The second problem is that many school systems teach all of the mandated character traits each year. If a system has 25 traits to cover and they are repeated each year, students will say “we did that last year.” In short, students are bored with it and do not take it seriously. Consequently, there is very little change in the behavior of students, and most character education programs, while they may be meeting state mandates, are ineffective and take time away from the regular instructional program.

There are those who believe that character cannot be taught, but it can be caught (Bulach, 2002). Actually, both have to occur! Students have to talk about the character trait and its implications, but they also have to see the behaviors modeled by the people in their daily environment. Consequently, instead of focusing on the word of the week or month, the focus should be one or two behaviors of the week. This could be reinforced by periodic discussions on why this behavior is important. The behaviors for each trait are found in the appendix or each school can create their own list of behaviors. For example, in the category of behaviors for respect is the behavior  “Students help to improve the appearance of school property.” This behavior relates to “respect for property.”

If the focus were on this behavior for the week, everyone on the faculty and staff would know what behaviors to look for and reinforce or take to task.  Students, teachers, faculty and others who were defacing property, littering, etc. would be seen by someone and would be called to task. More importantly, it would enable students to become peer enforcers of the behavior because the behavior can be seen. Peer enforcement of behavior is one of the main features of the JROTC program.

Another feature of many character education programs that contributes to ineffectiveness is a curriculum guide. The curriculum guide is used as a resource by all teachers,  and it is taught at a certain time of the day or week. This may cause some change in students’ character, but in order for any significant change, the curriculum must be infused throughout the entire school day. Parents and the community must also be involved in order to reinforce character outside the school as well. If the focus is on a behavior such as “improving the appearance of property” everyone will know what to look for. For example, cooks could look for food being thrown or litter on the floor, custodians could look for things left in the hallways and damage in restrooms, bus drivers could look for scribbling on the back of the seat, parents could look for their child’s room and its appearance, etc. The point being made is that when the focus is on behaviors , a curriculum guide becomes obsolete because time does not have to be spent teaching character traits since everyone is more likely to reinforce desired behavior all day long. In short, this approach to character education infuses the approach throughout the school day and community.

A third feature that leads to ineffectiveness in many character education programs is the assignment of responsibility for the program to a teacher such as social studies, health, or a counselor. This person is given the responsibility to implement the program, but does not have position power to make faculty do it. Consequently, many faculty do very little to promote character education. Unless the school leadership takes an active role in providing leadership for the character education program teachers will pay lip service to it, but do not really support it.

Lickona (1991) has compiled a document, available from the Character Education Partnership (800-988-8081), titled “The Eleven Principles of Character Education Effectiveness.”  A survey has been constructed from the eleven principles and it can be used to determine how effectively the character education program has been implemented.  Data from the 11 principles survey and the instrument described in this manuscript would allow school officials to determine how well their character education program is being implemented (process evaluation) and if their character curriculum is having any effect on student behaviors (outcome evaluation). Based on the data from these two instruments, school officials can modify their program as needed.

Conclusions

School officials must identify those character traits that the school community wants taught.  As many people as possible and in particular the clergy should be involved in the process.  School officials also need to assess those behaviors associated with each character trait so they will know which ones to target and whether their character education curriculum is effective in improving behavior. Implementing programs to improve student behaviors associated with character traits is a task well worth undertaking. Everyone in the school community should be involved and the process and progress should be evaluated. If the character education program is successful, bullying behavior and incidents of violence should decrease, because students will be more sympathetic, tolerant, kind, compassionate, forgiving, etc. Another possible outcome of a successful character education program could be an improvement in the culture/climate of the school. As faculty and staff model the behaviors associated with the character traits, and as their behavior is “caught” by the students, an improvement in climate/culture is likely to occur. With improvements in student behavior and culture/climate, the end result should be improved student achievement and test scores.

 

References

Brendtro, L. K., (2001). Worse than sticks and stones: Lesson from research on ridicule. Reclaiming Children and Youth, 10(1), 47-49.

Bulach, C. R.(2002). A comparison of character traits for JROTC students versus Non-JROTC students. Education, 122(3), 559-563.

Bulach, C. R., & Butler, J. (2002). A comparison of character values as perceived by teachers and students at differing grade levels.  Journal of Humanistic Counseling Education and Development, 41(3) 200-214).

Bulach, C. R. (2000) Bullying behavior at the middle school level: Are there gender

differences? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association at New Orleans, LA, 4-27-2000

Bulach, C. R. (2000). External factors that affect bullying behavior. Paper presented at the Eastern Educational Research Association at Clearwater, FL,  2-17-2000.

          Bulach, C. R. (in press) Bullying behavior: What is the potential for violence at your School? Journal of Instructional Psychology. (Scheduled for fall 2003 publication).

            Bulach, C. R. (1999). So you want to teach values? The School Administrator. 56(9), 37.

Joyner, T. (8-29-1999). Bullies on the rise. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Section R-1, p.1.

Lickona, T. (1991).  Educating for character:  How our schools can teach respect and responsibility.  New York: Bantam Books, 51.

Williams, M. M. (2000). Models of character education: Perspectives and developmental issues. Journal of Humanistic Counseling, Education, and Development, 39(1), 32-40.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appendix A

SELECTED CHARACTER VALUES AND THEIR CORRESPONDING BEHAVIORS  

Respect for self/others/property

 

            5.            Students think about the feelings of other students.

6            Students take care of school property.

7.            Students are positive about themselves.

14.            Students act to improve the appearance of the school or other property.

15.            Students do things that hurt other students.

16.            Students do things that are not good for themselves.

95.            Students think that sexual activity is okay

96.            Students use tobacco.

97.            Students use drugs and/or alcohol.

          100.             Students believe that keeping your body clean is important.

 

Honesty

 

8.            Students think it is okay to do something as long as they don't get caught.

9.            Students take things that don't belong to them.

            10.            Students turn in money or things that have been lost if they find them.

            11.            Students tell the truth.

            12.            Students can be trusted

 

Self-control/discipline

 

            17.            Students control themselves/behave when they need to.

            18.            Students do what the teachers ask them to do.

            19.            Students resist those things that are not good for them or that will get them in           trouble.

            20.            Students are able to wait to get what they want.

            24.            Students pay attention in class.

25.            Students let other students tell them what to do

            26.            Students control their anger.

 

Responsibility/dependability/accountability

 

21.            Students can be trusted to do what they say they will do.

22.            Students make excuses for their actions/argue about the consequences.

            23.            Students do what the teacher asks without having to be reminded.

            27.            Students complete their classwork on time.

            28.            Students turn in their homework on time.

            29.            Students accept the consequences of their decisions/actions.

 

 

Integrity/fairness

 

30            Students go along with the most popular student instead of those who are not popular.

31.            Students do what they are supposed to do.

32.            Students let other students talk them into doing something that is wrong.

39.            Students take advantage of other students if given a chance.

            40.            Students treat others the way they would want to be treated.

            41.            Students stand up or speak out for what they believe is right.

 

Perseverance/diligence

 

            33.            Students show determination when faced with a problem.

            34.            Students think about and plan their work.

35.            Students give up when they fail or do not succeed.

            36.            Students finish an assignment within the allotted time.

37.            Students are distracted when doing their work.

38.            Students daydream, doodle, stare out the window.

 

Cooperation

 

            42.            Students help each other.

43.            Students help the teacher.

44.            Students fight with each other.

            48.            Students work well in groups.

49.            Students argue with each other.

            50.            Students compromise to solve a conflict/problem.

 

Compassion/empathy

 

            45.            Students feel sorry for students who are having a problem.

46.            Students pick on each other.

47.            Students say/do things that hurt other students.

            51.            Students help a student who is being picked on.

            52.            Students listen to each other's problems.

            53.            Students comfort/console other students who have a problem.

 

Kindness

 

            54.            Students are nice to each other.

55.            Students are nice to teachers and other adults.

56.            Students say things about others that are harmful.

            61.            Students give compliments to each other.

62.            Students are cruel to each other.

            63.            Students help students who have physical or mental disabilities.

 

Forgiveness

 

57.            Students try to get even.

            58.            Students accept the mistakes of others.

59.            Students are mean to someone because of something that person did to             them in             the past..

            60.            Students accept an apology to end a problem.

 

Patriotism/citizenship

 

            64.            Students are positive about their country.

            65.            Students are positive about the police.

            66.            Students are positive about the need for rules and laws.

            72.            Students care about their community.

            73.            Students care about their school.

            74.            Students volunteer their services to help where needed.

 

Tolerance/diversity

 

13.             Students accept students who have a different religion..

67.            Students make fun of ideas that are different from theirs.

68.            Students accept differences of opinion.

69.            Students make fun of students who are different.

            70.            Students accept students who are from a different race.

71.            Students make an effort to understand students who are different.

 

Courtesy/politeness

 

77.            Students interrupt when others are talking.

78.            Students use cuss words or bad language.

79.            Students call each other names.

82.            Students say things like: thank you, pardon me, etc. when appropriate.

83.            Students listen when someone is talking to them.

84.            Students ignore other students.

98.            Students talk back to teachers and other adults.

 

 

 

 

Generosity/charity

 

75.            Students are more concerned about themselves than they are of others.

            76.            Students want to help the less fortunate.

            80.            Students are willing to share what they have with others.

81.            Students want to know what is in it for them.

 

Sportsmanship

 

87.            Students get mad when they lose.

            88.            Students congratulate their opponents whether they win or lose.

89.            Students quit trying if they know they are going to lose.

93.            Students will cheat to win.

            94.            Students agree that "how the game is played" is more important than winning.

 

Humility

 

85.            Students care too much about their appearance, e.g., having the right                clothing, looking just right, etc.

86.            Students brag about themselves.

90.            Students want to be the center of attention.

91.            Students put down other students.

92.            Students act as if they are better than other students.

            99.            Students admit when they are wrong.