Learning for Life Research
The first strand of our research, on 'The Values and Character Dispositions of 14-16 year olds', is now available. Please email elizabeth.melville@canterbury.ac.uk who will email you a pdf of the full 145 page report, or send to you an A5 summary booklet of the report. Pdf versions of the 'Values and Character: Higher Education and Graduate Employment' report and summary and 'The Formation of Virtues and Dispositions in 16-19 Year Olds' report and summary are also available either for download via the 'Research Reports' tab, or for email.
Our vision is of shared excitement about the potential for personal development, and acceptance of responsibility through awareness of the virtues, dispositions and attitudes implicit in personal character. In defining the virtues more closely we would ask, for example, what is it to acquire such a key virtue as justice – rather than just coming to behave justly? It seems to involve at least two principal things: (i) coming to value something that serves interests beyond one’s own; (ii) coming to see something as of intrinsic value or worthwhile for its own sake. This means that the truly just person would be one who is appropriately ego-transcendent and who also cares for the welfare of others for its own sake.
We seek to conduct qualitative and quantitative research with that form of moral education in which good character is central. We will discuss why character education is considered valuable, what character education is taken to mean, and will identify and test hypotheses about various influences (schools, families, communities, employers) on the development of character through rigorous empirical research methodologies.