Character Education Empirical Research: A Thematic Review and Comparative Content Analysis

Character Education Empirical Research (CEER) is a rapidly emerging field, but no thematic overview is available. This study aimed to fill this gap in the research, generating a thematic map of the CEER, then comparing it to empirical research from the fields of Moral Education (ME) and Positive Education (PE). PRISMA guidelines were followed to conduct a systematic search of the Web of Science and Scopus databases. 222 CEER articles were identified and thematically analysed. Six themes were identified: Conceptualisations, Measure Validations, Associations, Impact, Implementation and Development. Another systematic search was undertaken for PE and ME articles, and the results randomly sampled to attain 100 empirical articles from each field. These samples, along with the CEER, were subjected to a content analysis using the six CEER themes. Results revealed most MEER, PEER and CEER fit into the CEER thematic map, but that there are some key differences in research distribution.