Character in learning for life : a virtue-ethical rationale for recent research on moral and values education

This article has three broad aims. The first is to draw attention what is probably the largest empirical study of moral, values and character education in the United Kingdom to the present date. The second is to outline – sufficient for present purposes – a plausible conceptual or theoretical case for placing a particular virtue-ethical concept of character at the centre of contemporary scholarship and research into moral and values education. The third is to suggest, in the light of these empirical findings and theoretical considerations, a number of practical ways in which character education might be developed or pursued in formal or informal school curricula or in the wider community.