Educators around the globe are rethinking how schools shape not just what students know, but who they are becoming. In many countries, that entails a renewed focus on character education—and research suggests that the development of students’ personalities, attitudes, and behaviors is crucial to molding successful students and citizens.
What is character education? The definition varies from place to place, shaped by history and culture, and can be integrated into curricula in many different ways, as we will discuss. Moreover, there’s tension in many countries between traditionalist and progressive education approaches.
Traditionalist viewpoints see character as being rooted in a culture’s history, customs, and practices, often based on passed-down authority and group norms. Traditional approaches to character education emphasize identifying specific virtues through a moral storytelling framework.
Those coming from a progressive standpoint view character as a civic and political obligation—and it may even ask students to question cultural standards and received wisdom. For progressives, there is a stronger focus on a democratic process that encourages exploring which morals feel most relevant to the student, often through discussion.
There may not be a single model to replicate, but our interviews with educators in many countries reveal key insights about how character education is shaped and taught. It can be understood as a return to one of education’s original purposes—and for many, character education responds to the reality that many teachers have been reduced to only teaching content, when their deeper vocation is to form people.
The educators we interviewed shared the core need for an integrated approach that orients students toward “something that’s larger than ourselves,” says Cheryl Maurana, provost and founding director of the Kern National Network for Flourishing in Health. What’s often missing is not the values themselves, but the structures that allow them to be practiced and shared at school.
These differing approaches offer educators the opportunity to learn from one another, discover commonalities, and implement these practices in their own culturally responsive ways.
Character takes root when it’s woven into everyday learning
In Singapore, this type of education is referred to as character and citizenship education, standing at the intersection of Eastern and Western traditions. It is understood that these teachings are integral to the holistic development of students and they are included in the national classroom curriculum.
Ng May Gay is a research fellow at the Singapore Centre of Character and Citizenship Education who works on establishing the theoretical and philosophical foundations of character and citizenship education through education research. She stresses the importance of having parents who support discussion about character and its growth.
May explains that they have adopted an integrated approach to address students’ development of values, character, social-emotional well-being, and citizenship dispositions. From this framework, flourishing is not just about individual success or subject well-being, but also valuing the importance of social harmony, collective responsibility, and the common good.
“Singapore affirms personal aspirations and excellence, but at the same time we are also a communitarian society,” Gay says. “As [students] grow in character and competence, they remain grounded in belonging and responsibility to the community.”
By placing greater emphasis on including educators, students, and their families in ongoing conversations about values and growth, character education in Singapore becomes deeply interwoven with teaching and learning itself.
This holistic approach to character education intentionally builds reflection into every lesson and experience, with students being prompted to think about who they are becoming, how they relate to others, and the choices they make. This offers a framework that can work in classrooms around the world.
“I really feel very strongly that this form of assessment actually will create a meaningful shift in the teaching and learning by moving from an outcome-driven to a process-oriented approach,” Gay says. “It really positions assessment as being ongoing, collaborative, reflective, and I feel that this is essential for nurturing responsible, reflective citizens.”
Verónica Fernández Espinosa is a professor at Universidad Francisco de Vitoria and director of the Virtues and Values Education Centre. She explains that in Spain character education is rarely named explicitly in policy as a standalone field—but it still tends to be embedded within a competency-based curriculum. Specifically, in areas such as citizenship, school climate and relationships, well-being, tutoring, and digital competence.
“From my research perspective, this creates an important reality: Character is present in intentions, but it is often diffused in implementation and can be reduced to ‘values talk’ or civic content unless schools adopt an intentional whole-school approach,” Fernández Espinosa says.
In this way, character education is not just a missing element, but the thread needed to hold the learning experience together.
Character can be formed through cultural and spiritual traditions
Maneeza Dawood, a research scientist and program specialist at Stanford SPARQ and research director of Muraqaba Education, explains that Islam sees character as inherent in our nature—the concept of fitrah. Dawood says:
It comes from a space of abundance rather than deficit, with the goal of character development to refine what already exists in our nature. In contrast, a lot of contemporary character education tends to focus on the deficit and correction side. Starting from that place of abundance rather than deficit could really change the way character education is approached in schools today.
From an Islamic perspective, concepts like patience, gratitude, and jihad al‑nafs—the battle against one’s lower self or ego—are not just “nice traits” but religious duties that help build a relationship with God and promote moral accountability. This tradition of moral formation and ethical behavior is framed as part of worship, naturally infusing character education into daily life.
In many African countries, according to research, the idea of Ubuntu plays a key role in character development. One researcher writes that Ubuntu “defines the individual in terms of humanity or interdependency with others…and leads to the expression of certain virtues, namely those of hospitality, friendliness, caring, and sharing or compassion and generosity, openness or accessibility to others, sympathy and empathy.”
Peter Kingori is the director for character education programs at the Center for Character and Leadership in Nairobi, Kenya. He explains that in their programming, they emphasize Ubuntu and discussion about love.
“In Africa you have to talk about love,” Kingori says. “Love goes beyond boundaries—boundaries of tribes, boundaries of race, boundaries of ethnicity, and trying to embrace each other as brothers and sisters.”
Rather than working alone and driving the element of individualism and selfishness, this manifests in encouraging students and educators to raise their consciousness beyond self-interest and focus on what can bring people together. Kingori says:
How can they build relationships—the relationships between the teacher and the principal, the school and the community, the teachers and our teaching staff, and, of course, the teacher and the learner. How can they be mentored? How can they be guided? How can they be connected with each other? We always say that a problem shared is a problem half-solved.
Students need agency to internalize values
The drive to ensure that students are able to form core values as part of their own desire to maintain a sense of self is often the topic of discussion when it comes to character education. It raises the question: How do educators ensure that students feel an innate sense of self when it comes to their values and their morals—and not as another requirement or box to check off?
Verónica Perez Mendoza, director of the Dandelion Center for Character and Leadership in Argentina, aspires to transform education and promote a culture of virtues that fosters human flourishing. She emphasizes the importance of surrounding students with meaningful role models and creating environments where they can reflect and grow alongside each other.
Central to her approach is giving students greater autonomy by inviting them to reflect on why they act the way they do so that virtues become internalized as part of their identity.
“It empowers students in a way, because it’s telling them—what you do matters,” Perez Mendoza says. “Who you choose to become, and who you choose to be really matters. Not only does it matter to society, but also it matters for your own happiness.”
This presents special challenges in highly individualistic societies like the United States. Maurana points to polarization and widespread disconnection as signs of a system that has prioritized productivity over the human qualities that sustain individuals and communities. Those cultural forces can make it challenging for students to share and internalize positive values.
“We’re in a period of profound uncertainty and strain,” says Maurana, “But that’s where you really need to have your own inner set of strengths. If you don’t want to be told what to do, you’ve got to have some core value that you’re part of a greater good.”
Even in deeply individualistic societies, she argues, people still seek meaning, contribution, and belonging. Internalization begins when we are able to connect our personal goals to a shared purpose, whether that’s a belief in community, democracy, or even hoping that our contributions benefit future generations.
When dealing with societies that have this engrained individualistic nature, it’s important for educators to highlight that they are not encouraging students to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others, but rather that their flourishing is bound up in the flourishing of others.
Character education is not a new idea, but the urgency surrounding it is. As educators around the world grapple with systems that have overemphasized outcomes at the expense of human development, the question is no longer whether character belongs in education, but how it can be meaningfully and sustainably embedded.
Source: What Meaningful Character Education Looks Like Around the World