KQED News Mind/Shift – Katrina Schwartz
“Educators of all ages, from kindergarten through college, are quickly realizing that academic skills aren’t enough to ensure student success. Increasingly educators and district leaders are trying to incorporate non-cognitive skills into the school day that they hope will help students develop the inner fortitude and confidence to push through personal and learning challenges. But even as character development programs have become more popular, there hasn’t been much consensus on which character strengths lead to the best long term results. In a small scale study conducted in the Boston Area, Boston University Education Professor Scott Seider tried to determine which character strengths correlate with student success and examined how different approaches to character development impacted students. The results of his study are part of his book Character Compass: How Powerful School Culture Can Point Students Towards Success. Seider studied three charter schools within 10 miles of one another, all serving mostly children of color, and all performing well on standardized tests. The schools were similar in terms of structure, demographics and academic achievement, but each school chose to define and focus on character development in different ways.”(more)