The Application of a Strength-Based Approach of Students' Behaviours to the Development of a Character Education Curriculum for Elementary and Secondary Schools

Abstract

Character education programs have gained increasing interest in the past decade and are designed to produce students who are thoughtful , ethical, morally responsible, community oriented, and self-disciplined. However, curriculums to develop character education programs have not always been readily embraced by either educators or students. Character is diffuse, abstract, and global and is not easily operationalized into lesson plans. Personal strengths of students, on the other hand, are important aspects of character that have the added advantage of being concrete, specific, and experiential. In this paper, it is argued that by developing a curriculum of character education that is based upon students' strengths in multiple domains of functioning, it is possible to achieve the goals of character education.