A STUDY OF A THIRD-GRADE CHARACTER EDUCATION CURRICULUM BASED ON FEMINIST, MULTICULTURAL, AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES

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A STUDY OF A THIRD-GRADE CHARACTER EDUCATION CURRICULUM BASED ON FEMINIST, MULTICULTURAL, AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES

ABSTRACT

 

In this study, I have narrated my experience of teaching character education as a separate course to the 18 students in my third-grade classroom as mandated by my school district in Pennsylvania. The district character education task force provided a basic character education curriculum, which was mainly comprised of teaching 16 universal values to the children, a few model character education lessons, and some recommended library books. However, I chose to enhance and develop the curriculum through my own teacher research, especially by using the theories of feminist, critical, and multicultural pedagogies as a framework.

The main research question for my study asked how third-grade students learn the values of caring and justice after discussing issues of social justice in reference to gender, culture, and social class, and when generating certain kinds of artifacts. This question generated 11 sub-questions. My main approach was to discover the values that my thirdgrade children already knew when they came to school and to relate them to our classroom activities.

In this qualitative study, the main method I used to gather data on my teaching of character education was to keep a reflective journal in which I narrated my experiences of using multicultural materials and creating artifacts with the children in the classroom to explore values. I analyzed this data to find the recurrent themes or categories related to the values that my students understood and used.

This study helped me reflect on my own teaching and to discover the values of my students and how they had learned them, which I found was mainly through their families and community, as well as at school. I observed that the children in my classroom also developed a sense of caring and justice toward each other. There was some evidence that the course in character education that I had taught my students in third grade may have improved their behavior when they advanced to fourth grade, which was one of the goals of the district in mandating character education, along with a student code of conduct. However, further research could study the direct effects of character education on children’s behaviors in the classroom.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

LIST OF TABLES ……………………………………………………………………………………………… vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………………………………viii

 

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Character Education………………………………………………………………………………………….1 Character Education and Goals 2000…………………………………………………………………..4 Purpose of the Study…………………………………………………………………………………………7 Research Questions…………………………………………………………………………………………..7

Overview of the Study ………………………………………………………………………………………8

Chapter 2

THE HISTORY OF CHARACTER EDUCATION

IN THE SCHOOL DISTRICT……………………………………………………………………………….10

Valley School District……………………………………………………………………………………..10

Implementation of Character Education in the District………………………………………..11 Survey of the Parents on Character Education ………………………………………………14 District Task Force Development of CEP……………………………………………………..15 Cultural Differences Not Considered……………………………………………………………17 Limited Teacher Preparation for CEP…………………………………………………………..19

Views of Outcomes for the Students…………………………………………………………….21 Character Education and “The Standards”………………………………………………………….30

 

Chapter 3

LITERATURE REVIEW………………………………………………………………………………………34 Developing My Character Education Curriculum……………………………………………….34 The Origins of Character Education………………………………………………………………….37

Pedagogies to Enhance Character Education………………………………………………………39 Feminist Pedagogies ………………………………………………………………………………….40 Multicultural Pedagogies……………………………………………………………………………50

Critical Pedagogies ……………………………………………………………………………………57 The Role of the Community in Character Education……………………………………………60

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………….64

Chapter 4

METHODOLOGY ………………………………………………………………………………………………66 My Research Approach……………………………………………………………………………………68 Research Context: Values Education …………………………………………………………………70 Other Research Considerations…………………………………………………………………………72 The Research Questions for the Study……………………………………………………………….73 Teacher Research ……………………………………………………………………………………………74 Research Methods…………………………………………………………………………………………..75 Time Frame for the Study………………………………………………………………………………..77 Data Collection ………………………………………………………………………………………………77 Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………………79

Ethical Principles……………………………………………………………………………………………80 Limitations of the Study…………………………………………………………………………………..81

Chapter 5

MY CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK…………………………………………………………………….82 Description of My Curriculum Framework………………………………………………………..82 My Daily Experiences With the Curriculum ………………………………………………………84

An Example of Implementing the Curriculum ……………………………………………………96

 

Chapter 6

THE DATA ANALYSIS ……………………………………………………………………………………….98 The Research Questions…………………………………………………………………………………..98

Analyzing the Data …………………………………………………………………………………………99 Feminist Pedagogies ………………………………………………………………………………..100 Critical Pedagogies ………………………………………………………………………………….111 Multicultural Pedagogies………………………………………………………………………….116 Conclusions…………………………………………………………………………………………….120

Chapter 7

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION………………………………………………………………………….122

The Findings of the Study………………………………………………………………………………125 Conclusions and Implications……………………………………………………………………138 Political Implications/Policymaking…………………………………………………………..142

Recommendations for Future Research………………………………………………………144

 

References…………………………………………………………………………………………………………146

 

Appendix A: SAMPLES OF STUDENT SURVEY………………………………………………..154

 

Appendix B: RESULTS OF THE DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………………..164

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

 

This chapter provides background on the history of character education in the United States, the purpose of this study which focused on the teaching of character education in one third-grade classroom in a Pennsylvania school district, and the research questions used in this qualitative study.

 

Character Education

Character education is an educational movement that stresses the importance of teaching good character through emphasizing the universal values that we all share. According to Lickona (1991) of the Character Education Partnership, character education is as old as education itself. He states that in the earliest days of the Republic the schools provided character education through discipline, the teacher’s example, and the daily school curriculum. Lickona explains that the Bible, and later McGuffey’s Reader, which contained moral and ethical lessons, were the main texts in the schools in the early nineteenth century. According to Lickona, character education declined in the twentieth century, however, because of these developments:

  • Darwinism
  • The theory of logical positivism (fact vs. opinion)
  • The 1960’s personalism, which made the individual prefer rights and freedom over responsibility
  • Pluralism (Whose values should we teach?)
  • Secularization – the separation of church and state

Lickona (1991) reported that the 1970’s saw the return of character education to the schools because of values clarification theories and Kohlberg’s moral development studies, whereby students through reasoning chose their values freely. The 1990’s saw the return of the Character Education Movement through other efforts. In 1992, the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which aims to improve the ethics of society, hosted a meeting of educators, ethicists, and youth professionals, at which the eight-point Aspen Declaration of Character Education was drawn up and served as the basis for the

Character Education Partnership, which was formed in 1993. “The Character Education Partnership is a nonpartisan coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to developing moral character and civic virtue in our nation’s youth as one means of creating a more compassionate and responsible society” (www.character.org).

Lickona (1991) noted that character education returned to the schools because of the decline of the family, the trend in troubled youth ( including violence in the schools in the 1990’s), and a recovery of shared ethical values. Programs such as Values in Action, which promotes positive psychology, are being incorporated into school curriculums and are endorsed by President Bush (World Education, 2001). However, critics see these programs as superficial, having no genuine effects on the students’ value systems. Right wing critics see character education as overriding the responsibility of the parents and churches. Left wing critics argue that these programs touch on evangelism and stress obedience to authority figures (Citizens of Upright Moral Character, 2005).

Educator John Dewey held a different view of education (Character Education

Partnership, 2005); he saw character education as the central mission of the school. Dewey viewed education in relation to the transmission of values through communication, sharing experiences until they become a common possession. However, intentional and formal education are needed in these times of rapid knowledge growth and technological advance. On the other hand, George Counts, another noted American educator with a similar philosophy to Dewey’s, believed that education needs to identify with progressive forces like labor unions, farmers’ organizations, and minority groups. Therefore, a program in character education should help students become more assertive in their relationships with others and in their acquisition of knowledge. Students should be critical of their social situation (Hsieh, 2005).

Character education had its formal beginnings in the common schools of the colonial period where common rules, values, and religion were taught authoritatively to students. As time went on, progressive educators such as John Dewey and George Counts changed how society viewed public education. Dewey proposed the vision of public education as a means for communicating in order to form a society that shares aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge—in sum, a common understanding that is not based uniquely on “universal values.” George Counts believed in the progressive kind of education where teachers help to lead society and do not just follow political alliances. He believed that teachers should be concerned with controversial matters of economics, politics, and morality (Hsieh, 2005).

The point of view of the current Character Education Movement is that contemporary social problems like family dysfunction have created the necessity for schools to teach character and to instill values in youth. Leaders of this movement believe that instilling universal values in students minds will automatically improve their behavior and help them to achieve better goals. Today’s Character Education Movement has its supporters in radical religious groups, business associations, and the political right.

These groups try to protect the rights of White American middle and upper classes. However, some believe that it is a patriarchal and racist movement that aims to protect the national identity by the use of academic standards and universal values in schools

(World Ed News, 2005).

 

Character Education and Goals 2000

During the Clinton Administration, the U.S. Department of Education introduced character education as part of Goals 2000 in order to create schools that foster ethical, responsible, and caring young people by modeling and teaching good character. The primary goals of character education are to help students develop socially, ethically, and academically by infusing character education into every aspect of the school culture and curriculum (Character Education Program, 2005).

In 1997-1998, the Valley Area School District in Pennsylvania established a task force to develop a Character Education Program (CEP). (In this thesis, all names of schools and school personnel are pseudonyms.) Implementation of this program in the kindergarten through eighth grade in the district was the result of a local effort to improve discipline and the school atmosphere as part of a district-wide Student Code of Conduct that had been established the previous year. The aim of the district’s Character Education Program was to teach all the students appropriate behavior. Specifically, the district’s goal was to teach the students 16 universal values: friendship, cooperation, kindness, loyalty, respect, responsibility, trust, tolerance, work-ethic, perseverance, honesty, patriotism, empathy, courage, integrity, and patience––in an effort to improve student conduct.

On the mandate of the superintendent of schools, the Valley School District implemented a character education course, and one elementary school principal and one assistant principal co-chaired the district’s character education task force, which was called the Character Education Program Design Team. Each school in the district had a representative on the district task force and had a character education task force of its own. The district task force provided a basic, flexible program but also recommended specific materials for the course and school-wide promotion based on a program created by the Character Education Institute, a non-profit organization that maintains multiple resources for character education. Generally however, the Valley District CEP task force felt that each school should develop its own method for teaching the 16 values that the district had outlined in its program.

Every two weeks the schools with kindergarten through eighth grades were expected to teach one of the 16 values, which was the core of the district’s Character Education Curriculum. The district in turn developed posters with codes of conduct and posters quoting a famous person to promote the 16 values throughout the schools. The district superintendent mandated that the children in each classroom should receive 60 minutes of values instruction per week as part of the Character Education Program. Each school was also to develop its own task force to implement the program in their school. The district task force provided the teachers a number of lessons and a list of public library books representing each of the 16 values in order to teach character education as a separate course or 60-minute period each week. With positive results from these lessons, the district expected to help the students behave better in school, make the schools safer, and foster a love for learning among the children. It was also hoped that there would be fewer student referrals for disciplinary action as an outcome of this program.

During the same school year, on one of his visits to my school, the district superintendent recruited me to serve on the steering committee for the district Character Education Program task force. It was my first involvement in a district-wide program, and I became my school’s representative. Although the main content for the program had already been established before I joined the task force, I served on the district task force committee to continue the Character Education Program’s development.

Thus, I became interested in many aspects of character education as I taught the program to my students and learned much about this topic during the school year 19971998. Later, after I did my doctoral studies at Penn State University on leave from the district from 1999 to 2001, I began to link the feminist, multicultural, and critical pedagogies that I had studied to my teaching of character education in the classroom and to develop the character education curriculum for my classroom using these pedagogies. When I returned to the classroom in 2002, I decided to do teacher research to see how effective the character education curriculum was in my own third-grade classroom. While teaching this curriculum, I had begun to realize that my students already possessed specific values that they had acquired from their families and prior school experiences. Therefore, my teacher research inquired as to how my students had learned their values and which values they held, all of which became part of my formal doctoral research.

 

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study was to discover the values that my students already knew, how they had learned them, and how this knowledge could help me to teach better and teach character education better. I also did this study to contribute to the knowledge in the field of character education.

 

The Research Questions

For the purposes of this study, my emerging question was: How do third-grade students learn the values of caring and justice after discussing issues of social justice in reference to gender, culture, and social class and when generating certain kinds of artifacts?

The supporting questions included:

  1. What is the nature of the teacher/student and student/student interactions that are taking place in the classroom, and what student artifacts/creations are emerging from these?
  2. How do the students respond to the use of multicultural artifacts to promote critical discussions in the classroom?
  3. How can the teacher/researcher describe these interactions and creations?
  4. How can the teacher/researcher describe the climate in the classroom?
  5. What effect does the character education curriculum seem to have on the classroom curriculum as a whole?
  6. What kinds of interpretations can be inferred from these observations?
  7. What interpretations does the teacher/researcher make that exert a daily influence on curriculum choice?
  8. What new concepts and themes emerged from the data?
  9. Did new themes or topics emerge that were not expected?
  10. What insights did the study provide?
  11. How can the teacher/researcher report findings back to the students/subjects?

 

Overview of the Study

            Chapter 2 sets the context for this study with a description of Valley School District and the history of its Character Education Program, including how it was developed and for what purposes. Chapter 3 presents a review of the literature, including additional background on character education in the schools, and especially the theories of feminist, multicultural, and critical pedagogy and how I applied them to my teaching of character education and my teacher research. Chapter 4 introduces qualitative research, my research approach, teacher research, and the methods I used to gather data for my study: my reflective journal, student surveys, student artifacts, audio tapes of class lessons, and my ethnographic interviews of school personnel about the district’s Character Education Program. Information from the interviews is included in the history of character education in the district to set the context. Chapter 5 describes my character education curriculum framework and shows how I taught the 16 values in my classroom. Chapter 6 contains the results of my data analysis, according to the three pedagogies and answers the research questions. Chapter 7 includes a discussion of the findings of my study, the implications for my teaching of character education and for the school district, and recommendations for further research.

A STUDY OF A THIRD-GRADE CHARACTER EDUCATION CURRICULUM BASED ON FEMINIST, MULTICULTURAL, AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGIES

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