The Effects of Character Education on Social-Emotional Behavior

The addition of character education to school curricula has become an increasingly popular response to today’s heightened emphasis for students to succeed on academic high stake tests, leaving little regard for the development of social-emotional competencies. The purpose of this research was to study the effects of character education on the social-emotional behavior of elementary students in a private Montessori school. The study consisted of 18 students in a grade 1-4 classroom over a period of five weeks. Data was collected through daily tallying of negative behavior and through incident forms as well as student pre- and post-test evaluations regarding self and social awareness. Findings indicated that negative behaviors decreased overall and that student understanding of values improved. In addition, the data also indicated that there remains a need for character education to continue for more definitive results