Essay: Character education

Liz Bowie of The Baltimore Sun authored a 2016 news article on an etiquette program developed by a guidance counselor for a Baltimore area elementary school.  The program, known as “Guys with Ties, Girls with Pearls,” is part of a mentoring initiative designed to cultivate leadership, ethics, and proper social behavior in Baltimore County schools.  The program encourages students come to school in formal attire every Thursday, and the principal keeps a supply of ties and costume pearls for those who don’t have them at home.  The event is promoted as “dress for success.”  Similar programs are geared toward teaching students to have pride in themselves, teaching social media etiquette and responsibility, and writing thank you letters.  Staff report seeing a change in the atmosphere at the school and parents have placed such high demand on the program that the organizer now produces a newsletter detailing what parents can reinforce at home.  Bowie goes on to describe the program as growing in popularity every year and states other schools are looking to create their own etiquette programs as a result of the success (Bowie, 2016).
The concept of character education is deferred to the state level.  Georgia, for example, made character education compulsory in 1997.  The law requires every school in the state to concentrate on multiple traits such as respect to self and others, as well as such topics as citizenship (Gamel, 2014).
A 2014 study of the impact of character development on students’ perceptions of grit and resilience was performed by Mimi Gamel.  Character development in this study refers to a program described as mindset training.  The author explores the impact of character development and empowerment as it relates to perceptions of grit in 45 students between the ages of 10 to 18, as well as it’s significance.  According to the author, data obtained both before and after completion of the program indicates a significant relationship between the participants’ perception of grit development.  With regards to resilience, there was a slight increase in some components.  Perceptions of optimism, self-efficacy, adaptability and comfort were found to be significantly impacted.  However, perceptions of trust, support, and tolerance increased only slightly.  Most significant of the findings were the declines in the students’ sensitivity, recovery time, and impairment.  Gamel goes on to describe this relationship as indicating that students understood they were not alone when faced with adversity, and that they developed an appreciation for adapting to their environments.  The author also reports the students developed a desire to find others with similar interests so that they could collaborate on shared goals (Gamel, 2014).
Gamel concludes that by teaching character through a growth mindset, there could be a major impact to the composition of future generations.  The author goes on to recommend development of these non-cognitive skills through programs with an intentional design (Gamel, 2014).
A 2015 study by Hochanadel and Finamore explores the difference between fixed and growth mindset in education as it relates to persistence, also described by Angela Duckworth as grit (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015).  Duckworth also took note of research being performed by Carol Dweck to determine how a fixed belief prevents students from performing as well as they potentially could.  From this, Duckworth concluded that grit can be developed through a growth mindset (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015).  In the Hochandel and Finamore article, Duckworth’s 2007 grit predictor study of 1,218 West Point cadets is discussed.  The purpose of Duckworth’s study was to find out what factors may have an effect on success or failure.  Hochanandel and Finamore go on to explain that students with a growth mindset value effort and perceive ability as a learned skill.  Conversely, students with a fixed mindset who perceive intelligence as inherent exert less effort (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015).  The article also notes Duckworth’s observation that it is possible individuals obtain a greater appreciation for the efficacy of effort as they age, and also discusses her conclusion that grit is not only composed of resilience when faced with adversity or failure, but also commitments to which individuals may remain loyal over the span of many years.  Furthermore, Duckworth also found that grit was a greater predictor of success than any other studied measure (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015).
Hochanadel and Finamore conclude that growth mindset is central to changing a student’s thinking about intelligence and their ability, and they reinforce Duckworth’s findings that having a growth mindset lends to the development of grit.  Considering grit as a predictor of success, Hochanadel and Finamore recommend teaching a growth mindset to facilitate the development of long-term goals and the tools students need to achieve their goals (Hochanadel & Finamore, 2015).
Susan Polirstok examines academic performance of students in a secondary educational setting from the perspective of grit and mindset in her 2017 article.  Polirstok relies heavily on work by Duckworth and Dweck in both grit and mindset, and she explores strategies to improve the academic performance of students.  Among the strategies are “learning stories,” literature about adolescents as a way to view life from another perspective, “choice maps” of the choices made by the characters in literature as they relate to one’s own personal responsibility, a software program known as The Brainology Program, and the character development and the same mindset training program as was also explored by Mimi Gamel (2014).  Other behavioral and cognitive approaches examined include peer tutoring, self-evaluation, and verbal self-instruction.  Polirstok concludes that grit and mindset are important regardless of age but stresses the importance for adolescents as significantly affecting their futures (Polirstok, 2017).
While the majority of literature reviewed explores growth mindset, there are some studies which seek to determine if there is a physiological or genetic aspect of grit in academic performance.  In a 2017 study by Wang, et al., magnetic resonance imaging of 217 students described as healthy Chinese adolescents found that grit was negatively related to brain activity in a portion of the brain known as the right dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC).  This is the portion of the brain involved in self-regulation, planning, goal setting and maintenance, and counterfactual thinking for reflection on past failures.  The study concludes that grit and academic performance share a neural link in the right dmPFC.  However, the authors do not imply a fixed ability or mindset and go on to suggest grit-related behavioral and neural training programs could be beneficial in educational settings (Wang, et al., 2017).
In a genetically sensitive 2016 study by Rimfeld, Dale, Kovas, and Plomin, the authors explore grit as a prediction of academic achievement as it relates to specific personality traits.  The authors sourced a representative UK population sample of 4,624 individuals from the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS) sample.  The TEDS sample is composed of more than 10,000 twin pairs born between 1994 and 1996.  The analysis found that grit as a trait, described as perseverance and passion for long-term goals, has approximately a 37% heritability rate and found no evidence for shared environmental influence.  The authors go on to consider different personality traits and conclude that perseverance and conscientiousness are significantly related to academic achievement but that grit adds little to the phenotype or genetic makeup of an individual (Rimfeld, Dale, Kovas, & Plomin, 2016).
While perseverance and grit are primarily considered to be desirable traits, a 2015 study by Lucas, Gratch, Cheng, and Marsella explores the potential costs one may incur by persisting when they could have otherwise moved on to other activities.  The authors reason that grittier individuals are more willing to risk failure to achieve a goal.  Results also show that grittier individuals are more susceptible to monetary losses.  The authors go on to suggest that while grit is a powerful tool for success, perhaps we should consider also teaching the balance of knowing when persistence is likely to be a net decrease in success (Lucas, Gratch, Cheng, & Marsella, 2015)