Fostering virtues through character education
This overview briefly covers the organization of instruction related to a project called “Fostering Virtues through Poetry Education.” The project aims to enhance students’ moral development through the teaching of poetry. Its purpose is to develop and evaluate a method of moral education, at the lower and upper secondary school levels, through the reading, discussion, and writing of poetry. The background of the project stems from the author’s experience teaching philosophy and ethics at both lower and upper secondary school levels. The author has seen both that students may naturally connect with the material and immediately begin to think independently and creatively, and that others sometimes see no purpose in the content or in schooling at all. With this project, the author wishes to offer an approach to teaching Icelandic that uses tools from moral education and philosophical dialogue.
There are six lesson plans in total.
In the below, you will find the sequence of lessons and a brief description of their content.
The lesson plans largely encorporate of methodology of Philosophy for Children (P4C).
The lesson plans are accompanied by Powerpoint slides, to be used in two creative writing workshops (lesson plans 5 & 6).
- Lesson Plan 1
- Lesson Plan 2
- Lesson Plan 3
- Lesson Plan 4
- Lesson Plan 5 • Competence Aims • Workshop 1 (Power Point Slides) • Assessment
- Lesson Plan 6 • Competence Aims • Workshop 2 (Power Point Slides) • Assessment
What is Character Education?
The ultimate aim of character education is flourishing (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2017). The working definition of character in this thesis is taken from the ‘Framework for Character Education in Schools,’ published by the Jubilee Centre in June 2017. After having defined character as ‘a set of dispositions that produce specific moral emotions, inform motivation and guide conduct’, it ‘includes all explicit and implicit educational activities that help young people develop positive personal strengths called virtues’ (Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, 2017).
