l and mental qualities which distinguish an individual....
However, despite this concise definition, arriving at a consensus among educators as to the nature of character education is difficult.
Some educators view character education as instruction aimed at fostering students' decision-making abilities. Berreth and Berman (1997) stated that for many educators espousing this perspective, character education is viewed as instruction focused on the development of knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable the learner to make informed and responsible choices.
Other educators view character education as more conceptually related to the development of a social consciousness than to decision-making abilities persay. In this regard, Berreth and Berman (1997) note that these educators conceptualize character education in terms of helping students to live in a globally diverse society. Programs based on this conceptualization of character education would be concerned with such things as teaching students to be concerned with protecting the environment or providing them with diversity or multicultural training (Tyree, 1997).
Some definitions of character education emphasize psychobehavioral components and the need to improve these toward the goal of helping students behave in more moral and ethical ways. King (1997), for example, relates character education to self-insight, stating that by fostering self-insight, character education enables students to make moral and ethical judgements and engage in moral and ethical behavior.
Another psychobehavioral perspective views character education as the fostering of certain personality traits and characteristics in students. These educators state that successful character education programs teach students how to become empathetic, honest, giving, cooperative, responsible and respectful people (Black, 1996).
In other words, those holding to a more psychobehavioral view d...