ABSTRACT

Writing in the Journal of Research in Character Education, character education researcher and historian James Leming (2006) points out a paradox: On the one hand, a “motivating rationale” for contemporary character education has been adolescent behavior such as “suicide rates, teen violence, declining academic performance, increasing drug usage, and precocious sexual activity”; on the other hand, “to date general character education efforts have been primarily focused on elementary and middle school levels” (p. 83). Although character-related challenges are perceived to be greatest at the high school level, character education interventions have primarily targeted the elementary and middle developmental levels. Leming’s assessment that character education efforts “have made few inroads in high schools” (2006, p. 84) is corroborated by Berkowitz and Bier’s (2006) What Works in Character Education. In this monograph, 33 character education programs or strategies are identified that have demonstrated empirical effectiveness; the great majority of these approaches, they note, were developed for the elementary or middle school levels (Berkowitz & Bier, 2006). If high schools do in fact have less interest in character education than elementary and middle schools, that phenomenon cannot be explained by lack of interest in school improvement. On the contrary, for more than a decade, strengthening high schools has been at the forefront of the national school reform debate. At least a dozen educational organizations are dedicated to promoting one or another high school reform model (cf. National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, 2004). Philanthropic groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have poured extensive resources into promoting small learning communities, school connectedness, and other efforts to increase high school academic achievement, especially among historically underserved students (Vander Ark, 2005). If problems such as underachievement, drop-outs, academic dishonesty, violence, drugs, and sexual activity are most pronounced in the high school years, why, then,

have high schools not embraced character education as a central school improvement strategy? Leming offers as one reason the fact that

high school teachers tend to identify themselves as subject matter specialists and give less emphasis to character development than in elementary and middle schools. High school teachers, when asked to define their professional focus, tend to say, “I teach History” or some other subject area.