Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Inquiry How are students going to function effectively in a democratic society? This collection of original essays outlines the critical role of our schools in helping create the conditions necessary for a democracy--and helping create in students the characteristics or dispositions critical to maintaining a democracy.

Winner of the 2023 Outstanding Book Award from AERA's Moral Development and Education SIG! In PRIMED for Character Education, renowned character educator Marvin W Berkowitz boils down decades of research on evidence-based practices and thought-provoking field experience into a clear set of principles that leaders, administrators, and teacher-leaders can implement to help students thrive. The author’s original six-component framework offers a comprehensive guide to shaping purposeful learning environments, healthy relationships, core values and virtues, role models, empowerment, and long-term development in any PreK-12 school or district. This engaging and heartfelt book features tips for practice, anecdotes from award-winning schools, and straightforward tenets from moral education, social-emotional learning, and positive psychology.

. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.

There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have mandates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological rhetoric of the field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last fifteen years and points forward to the future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of developmental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings, and much more.

There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have mandates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological rhetoric of the field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last fifteen years and points forward to the future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of developmental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings, and much more.

The Handbook of Moral Motivation offers a contemporary and comprehensive appraisal of the age-old question about motivation to do the good and to prevent the bad. From a research point of view, this question remains open even though we present here a rich collection of new ideas and data. Two sources helped the editors to frame the chapters: first they looked at an overwhelmingly fruitful research tradition on motivation in general (attribution theory, performance theory, self-determination theory, etc.) in relationship to morality. The second source refers to the tension between moral judgment (feelings, beliefs) and the real moral act in a twofold manner: (a) as a necessary duty, and, (b) as a social but not necessary bond. In addition, the handbook utilizes the latest research from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, wishing to suggest by this that the answer to the posed question will likely not come from one discipline alone. Furthermore, our hope is that the implicit criticism that the narrowly constructed research approach of the recent past has contributed to closing off rather than opening up interdisciplinary lines of research becomes in this volume a strong counter discourse. The editors and authors of the handbook commend the research contained within in the hope that it will contribute to better understanding of humanity as an inherently moral species.

Calls for renewed moral education in America's schools, offering dozens of programs schools can adopt to teach students respect, responsibility, hard work, and other values that should not be left to parents to teach.