This paper briefly introduces the definition, effective character education projects, implementation principles and implementation strategies of foreign character education. In recent years, China has paid more and more attention to the mental health of primary and secondary school students, and should establish a character education program suitable for the development of primary and secondary school students in China.
Martin? Lu Se? Kim said:? Intelligence plus personality is the real purpose of education. ? The school is not only responsible for teaching students cultural knowledge, but also for promoting students' character development. Schools can influence children's self-concept; Social skills, especially among peers; Values; The development of moral reasoning; Prosocial tendencies and behaviors; Moral sense and so on.
I. Definition of Character Education
Personality involves personal attitude, behavior, motivation and skills. Individuals with good personality will show the attitude of hard work and caring for others; Critical thinking and moral reasoning ability; Honest, responsible and fair behavior; Social skills to get along well with others.
Different researchers and institutions have put forward different views on the definition of character education. The partnership of character education holds that character education has formed the social core moral values for schools, regions and countries to cultivate students, including caring for others, honesty, fairness, responsibility and respect for themselves and others. The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development believes that character education is to teach children basic human values, including honesty, kindness, generosity, courage, freedom, equality and respect, so that children can become responsible and self-disciplined. The National Character Education Committee believes that character education is to help children and adolescents become more caring, principled and responsible through various means.
Rikner, the main advocate of character education, believes that character education is to cultivate children and teenagers' good character in line with social core values and make them become individuals who are beneficial to society. Battistich (2005) believes that character education is a process of promoting the best character development of children and adolescents by using all resources of the school. Berkowitz and Bier(2005) put forward a conceptual model of character education, which assumes that character is a psychological concept, that is, the effect of effective character education is reflected in students' psychological development; The goal of character education is to develop a series of children's psychological characteristics and influence children's sense of responsibility, morality and self-management ability to society and themselves; Character education is very effective because it is based on social, educational and situational factors, which play an important role in the development of children's psychological characteristics.
Although different institutions and scholars have put forward different definitions, in a word, character education is to cultivate children and adolescents' positive psychological quality and eventually make them become sound personalities.
Second, the implementation of quality education and evaluation principles
Lickona has formulated the principle of 1 1 character education, which schools and social institutions that implement character education must abide by and can evaluate character education through this principle. This 1 1 principle basically embodies the main idea of character education.
1. Enhance core moral values and supportive performance values as the basis of ideal character. Core moral values such as care, honesty, justice, responsibility, respect for others and oneself, and supporting performance values such as diligence and perseverance are the basis for forming good character. Schools should base themselves on these values when implementing character education, and strive to promote children to form behaviors that conform to these core values.
It must be defined from three aspects: thinking, emotion and behavior? Character? . Ideal personality involves the understanding, concern and practice of core values. Therefore, studying personality development is to seek children's development in different aspects of moral life, such as cognition, emotion and behavior. The task of character education is to help students understand core values through learning and observing role models, to help students develop empathy and form intimate relationships to pay attention to core values, and to help students establish prosocial behaviors to practice core values.
3. Use comprehensive, systematic and positive methods to conduct character education. Schools should actively carry out character education and not wait for opportunities. We should make use of all the resources of school education. ? Are you alone? The independent character education course may be beneficial at first, and there may be some beneficial factors in the process of running, but we must realize that it cannot replace the comprehensive method of combining character development with school life.
4. Create a caring school community. To carry out character education is to strive to make the school a civilized, caring and fair social system, and to form close relationships between students, students and teachers, and teachers and teachers. In a caring school, the daily life of the class and the school environment will be full of care and respect.
5. Provide students with opportunities for moral behavior. Like intellectual learning, students are the constructors of moral learning. In order to form a good character, students need many opportunities to apply the values of sympathy, responsibility and fairness in daily communication, so that students have the opportunity to carry out moral practice.
6. Including challenging academic courses that respect all children, so as to promote the good development of their character. A challenging course should include active teaching and learning methods, which can attract students' interest and provide them with opportunities for creative thinking, thus increasing their autonomy.
7. Strive to cultivate students' intrinsic motivation. The increase of intrinsic motivation is a development process. In the process of character education, schools should not overemphasize external rewards, but let students actively want to be friendly. This requires the school to give appropriate recognition to students' prosocial behavior or provide specific rewards to appreciate it, so that students can concentrate on becoming people with good character.
8. All staff participate in education and jointly guide students' education. All teachers and staff are members of the school, and they all have the responsibility of character education. They must support, identify with and abide by the core values of educating students, make use of every opportunity to get along with students and cultivate their good character.
9. Strive for the long-term support of leaders and the active participation of students. The school management department must be responsible for the planning and implementation of character education and provide long-term support. In addition, students should also participate in character education through class meeting, student union, peer conflict mediation and cross-age guidance.
10. The principle of joint participation of parents and community members. Schools need to establish close ties with families to promote the effectiveness of character education, and at the same time, they need the participation of wider social groups to jointly promote the development of students' character.
1 1. Comprehensive evaluation principle. Effective character education must be evaluated by qualitative and quantitative methods, which should not only evaluate the school as a community? Character? Working with teachers and staff is the growth and progress of character educators, and it is also the need to evaluate students' good character.
Third, effective character education programs.
Berkowitz and Bier pay attention to the personality education of children and adolescents (K-12) from kindergarten to grade, and think that personality education should include not only the items to promote children's personality development, but also the items to measure children's personality as a result variable. According to this definition, and according to the above principles and standards of character education, they selected 54 character education projects, and further selected projects that met the requirements. No child left behind? (No Child Left Behind) A total of 39 standard character education projects were selected. Finally, select those well-designed character education projects which are proved to be effective through empirical research and can effectively promote the character development of children and adolescents, and select 33 projects.
The effects of these 33 character education projects have been supported by a large number of empirical studies. For example, research shows that the path effectively improves the abilities of ordinary children and children with special needs (including deaf-mute students, students with behavioral disorders, students with learning disabilities and extraordinary students) in self-control, emotional awareness and understanding, and social problem solving; The project of promoting healthy children promotes the improvement of students' academic performance and social ability. In addition, empirical research also shows that these projects have lasting effects. For example, it is found that children's development projects and positive action projects still have significant effects until junior high school and senior high school.
Fourthly, the strategy of effective character education project.
Generally speaking, effective character education can produce many different results, mainly including three aspects: head, heart and hands. Mind? Mainly reflected in knowledge and thinking. Heart? Mainly reflected in emotions and motivation. Hands? Mainly reflected in behavior and skills.
The researchers found that these character education programs were effective because they adopted some effective strategies, including:
1. Career development. Continuous professional training can ensure the effective implementation of character education, and finally make the character education project more professional;
2. Peer interaction. All effective character education projects include peer communication strategies, and active peer communication is needed in class or group role-playing or cooperative learning training;
3. Direct teaching. This strategy is very common. Lickona has always advocated character education. Do you have to do it? Lead by example? ;
4. Skills training. Many strategies are used to realize social-emotional skills and abilities, which can be divided into individual skills training and inter-individual skills training, such as: self-management and conflict resolution;
5. Clear the theme. Most effective character education projects have clear educational goals, some focus on educating children and teenagers' moral sense, some focus on values and so on;
6. Family and social participation. Usually, character education projects include family members (especially parents), social members and institutions. Among them, some projects take parents as training objects, and some projects involve parents and social members in the design and implementation of character education;
7. Set an example. Many character education projects provide excellent representatives of peers or adults as examples to cultivate students' character development;
8. Integrate into subject education. It is very necessary to integrate character education into daily teaching. The study also found that character education effectively promoted students' studies and achievements.
9. Application of multiple strategies. Effective character education projects rarely use a single strategy, generally including a variety of educational strategies.
Verb (abbreviation of verb) education enlightenment
The Guiding Outline of Mental Health Education in Primary and Secondary Schools (revised 20 12) issued by China's Ministry of Education clearly points out that primary and secondary school students are in an important period of physical and mental development. With the development of physiology and psychology, the expansion of social experience and the change of thinking mode, especially in the face of the pressure of social competition, they will encounter various problems in their study and life, self-awareness, Emotional adjustment, interpersonal communication and employment. Therefore, developing mental health education in primary and secondary schools is the need of students' healthy physical and mental growth and the inevitable requirement of comprehensively promoting quality education. This shows that China pays more and more attention to the mental health of primary and secondary school students, but the research on mental health in China is mainly aimed at children and adults, but there is no systematic study on the living conditions of primary and secondary school students. Most researchers pay attention to psychological problems and ignore the development and cultivation of positive character. Effective character education projects can not only improve the behavior problems of primary and secondary school students, but also effectively promote the development of positive character of children and adolescents. However, the effective character education project was established under the background of western culture, but there is no systematic and effective character education project in China, which is an urgent task for psychologists, educators and front-line educators of child development in China.
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