Wendt Character Initiative Library Collection: Education

Shows how to promote character growth and discernment of right from wrong among schoolchildren of all age groups.

"Building Character in Schools" clearly defines the responsibilities of adults and students in modeling and nurturing character and sets forth practical guidelines for schools seeking to become "communities of virtue where responsibility, hard work, honesty, and kindness are modeled, taught, expected, celebrated, and continually practiced."

The book's primary purpose is to introduce novels that show strength of character. It offers guidance for opening a dialogue about character issues through the included texts. While looking for books with strong character traits the authors also sought to include award-winning titles from authors whose general bodies of work have been acclaimed.

Often the school is left as an institution seemingly ethically neutral, leaving untouched questions about whether the school itself is a site of injustice toward both educators and children. Springing from his well-known Building an Ethical School, Robert J. Starratt now looks more closely at the educational leader’s responsibility to ensure that the whole fabric of the educational process reflects an ethical philosophy of education. Starratt argues that the work of educating young people is by its very nature an ethical work as well as an intellectual work, and that this work inescapably engages educators and their pupils with an academic curriculum, a social curriculum, and a civic curriculum. Cultivating an Ethical Schoollays a foundation for educators seeking to cultivate a comprehensive ethical educating environment. The second half of the book then takes up the more specific perspectives on teaching and learning that constitute the heart of cultivating an ethical school. Starratt provides examples of how an ethical school can expose students to a variety of perspectives on the challenges they will be called upon to face in the worlds of culture, nature, and society. This valuable book shows leaders and educators the importance of organizing a curriculum and a pedagogy that simultaneously respects and cultivates the intellectual, personal, and social qualities of being human.

Education and the Crisis of Public Values examines the shift in American society away from democratic public values, the ensuing move toward a market-driven mode of education, and the growing social disinvestment in youth in the last decade. The book examines how the ideal of public education as a democratic public sphere, has been under siege in a number of ways, including full fledged attacks by corporate interests on public school teachers, schools of education, and teacher unions. The book also examines how a business culture cloaked in the guise of generosity and reform has supported a charter school movement that takes as its aim the dismantling of public schools in favor of a corporate-friendly privatized system. The book concludes by arguing for educators to take on the role of public intellectuals willing to engage in creating a formative culture of learning capable of nurturing the capacities to defend public and higher education as a public good crucial to sustaining a critical citizenry and a democratic society. Central to the book is the issue of what is now required for educators, parents, and concerned citizens to align education with a defense of public values, critical education to a defense of public life, and the construction of young people as individual and social agents responsible to the ideals of a democratic society.

Ethical Decision Making in School and District Administration provides K-12 school administrators with the knowledge to see how a moral infrastructure can be created so that procedures aimed at a shared vision for all involved are recognized as good. The book begins with theory and ends with prescriptions for practice.

Ethical Practices and Implications in Distance Learning outlines a systems approach as the framework to guide all ethical perspectives in Open and Distance Learning System (ODLS). This important title provides academicians, students, and professionals with ethical insight into the world of e-learning through fascinating case studies that elucidate the issues through real-world examples.

This bookstudies education and curriculum from the perspective of the teacher’s stance in the classroom. Writing through the lenses offered by autobiography, a lifetime in the classroom serving as teacher, and drawing heavily on Jewish and secular scholarly texts, Block offers a vision of education that serves as an alternative to the increasingly instrumentalist, managerial, standards-driven impersonal nature of contemporary schools. He advocates not for a pedagogy of ethics, but for theoriginal ethical stance every teacher already assumes by entering into the classroom. It is from this stance in ethics, he argues, that all pedagogy derives.

What does it really mean to be intelligent? Ron Ritchhart presents a new and powerful view of intelligence that moves beyond ability to focus on cognitive dispositions such as curiosity, skepticism, and open mindedness. Arguing persuasively for this new conception of intelligence, the author uses vivid classroom vignettes to explore the foundations of intellectual character and describe how teachers can enculturate productive patterns of thinking in their students. Intellectual Character presents illustrative, inspiring stories of exemplary teachers to help show how intellectual traits and thinking dispositions can be developed and cultivated in students to promote successful learning. This vital book provides a model of authentic and powerful teaching and offers practical strategies for creating classroom environments that support thinking.

This resource provides a comprehensive plan for creating and sustaining a school- and classroom-based character development programme while maintaining a unique and consistent focus on "keeping it simple" and "making it real." Unlike many existing models for character development, the book’s approach addresses the underlying factors that limit students' interest and/or desire to develop positive attitudes and behaviours. These elements include students' perceptions about their physical, emotional, and intellectual environments, and how those environments are influenced by the relationships with their principals, teachers, and each other. Based on research, best practices, and the author's more than 30 years in education, Keep It Simple, Make It Real: Character Development in Grades 6-12 gives educators a powerful tool for influencing students' attitudes and behaviours.

This one-of-a-kind, comprehensive history of moral education in American schools provides an invaluable historical context for contemporary debates. McClellan traces American traditions of moral education from the colonial era to the present, illuminating both debates about the subject and actual practices in public and private schools, colleges, and universities. He pays particular attention to changing fashions in pedagogy, to church-state conflicts, to the long decline of character training in the schools, and to recent efforts to restore moral education to its once-honored place. The book concludes with a thorough examination of recent theorists, including Lawrence Kohlberg, William J. Bennett, Carol Gilligan, and Nel Noddings, and an appraisal of current practice in American schools.

Sowing the Seeds of Character: The Moral Education of Adolescents in Public and Private SchoolS≪/i> is a book for all teachers and parents. It rests on the premise that the moral education of students falls within the purview of schools, whether they assume responsibility for it or not. Regardless of the place of moral education in the formal curriculum, all teachers serve as moral exemplars to their students, for good or for ill. Teachers of science, social studies, history, and literature courses cannot help but inculcate moral sensibility and attitudes in their students by the ways in which they lead them to grapple with—or glide over—the moral implications of what they teach. Judd Kruger Levingston draws many lessons and examples from his extensive research and teaching experience in Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic, public, Quaker, and Chinese schools. He argues that teachers should become proficient in directing role-playing simulations of moral decision-making as morally complex topics arise within the standard curriculum.

Rachael Kessler shows how can educators and parents of diverse backgrounds can come together to find ways to invite soul into schools without violating the separation of church and state or the deeply held beliefs of families and students.

From ancient times, philosophers, theologians, and artists have attempted to describe and categorize the defining virtues of civilization. InTruth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed, renowned education authority Howard Gardner explores the meaning of the title's three virtues in an age when vast technological advancement and relativistic attitudes toward human nature have deeply shaken our moral worldview. His incisive examination reveals that although these concepts are changing faster than ever before, they are--and will remain, with our stewardship--cornerstones of our society. Designed to appeal to a wide readership,Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframedis an approachable primer on the foundations of ethics in the modern age.

Tragic events in our schools and communities have sparked the integration of character education into new and existing programs. To help aid teachers and librarians in the search for appropriate resources to emphasize good character traits, Oryx has developed another helpful reference by bestselling author Susan Hall. This unique resource provides a guide to picture storybooks and the character traits each describes.