Conference Papers 2026
Character Caught, Taught, and Sought
January 8th – 10th 2026
Select a presenter from the list below to view the abstract and papers (where available) for the 14th annual conference in January 2026.
If you are looking to submit a paper, please click here to submit before the 1st December 2025.
These papers are works in progress and should not be cited without author’s prior permission.
Please contact jubileecentrepapers@contacts.bham.ac.uk for further information.
Keynotes
Academic Flourishing and Student Formation
We put forward various conceptual and empirical proposals for assessing the flourishing of an academic institution and its role in student formation. We consider the breath and variation of various university and college mission and vision statements and their implications for student formation and for what might be considered as reasonable bounds for the scope of an educational institution’s contributions to student flourishing. We comment upon and argue for the importance of student and character formation even to attain a university’s more cognitive and epistemic goals and ends. We discuss the core purposes of the university beyond student formation and also broader notions of what it means for a college or university to flourish as an academic community. We propose various assessments that might be of use in evaluating such academic flourishing. Finally, we point towards some practical resources that can be used to potentially strengthen student formation and the flourishing of academic institutions and the need for further curation, evaluation, and implementation of such resources to better promote academic flourishing.
Forming Good Professionals
Western societies are marked by growing polarization and declining trust – both in the institutions that shape our world and in the professionals who lead them. Professionals also increasingly cite wellbeing obstacles to personal and professional flourishing. Drawing upon his recent scholarship and experience leading the professional schools’ efforts of the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University, Kenneth Townsend will examine specific ways that character-based professional formation can enable professionals to live more purposeful, integrated lives while also advancing social trust by improving the public’s perception that professionals are worthy of the trust they seek.
Character Wrought: Forging Strengths from Adversity
The Jubilee Centre’s Framework of dividing strategies of character development into ‘taught’, ‘caught’ and ‘sought’ has become hugely influential, gaining traction with both theorists and practitioners. I propose, however, that this conceptualisation be enriched by the addition of a further category that explicitly recognises the importance of our response to inevitable hardships in the formation of character. In this keynote, I present character ‘wrought’ – the strategy that enables us to forge strengths in the crucible of the suffering, challenge, and disappointment that are an inescapable part of the human condition.
Building Global Networks for Character and Flourishing
Professor Verónica Fernández, Dr. Peter Kingori, Professor Cheryl Maurana, Agustin Porres, Professor Oon-Seng Tan
Character Education has been experiencing a resurgence around the world. Over the last decade, many new networks, centres, and organisations focused on character and virtue development in the interests of human flourishing have been established. This panel session explores the development of these networks across five continents. The panel presenters will each provide an overview of the key character education developments in their region – covering research, policy, and practice. They will also outline the main challenges and opportunities for advancing character education in their regions, as well as offer reflections on how character education might evolve. Particular attention will be given to enhancing collaboration between networks by identifying areas of synergy and increasing understanding of areas of difference.
Seminars
Character Across Cultures: Taught, Caught then Sought Outdoors
Character development was a founding principle of the Outward Bound (OB) movement and for over 80 years different schools across 35 different countries have been running courses from 1-30 days long to develop ‘character’. Following a two-part survey of all 35 schools in the Outward Bound International (OBI) network and using the Inglehart-Welzel World Values (WV) Map, 11 schools were identified to conduct in depth case studies. Themes were developed within each case and compared across cases to help researchers identify five propositions. Five mechanisms of change, expressed as propositions, were identified (authentic adventure, educational philosophy, educational models, instructor behaviours and service) and theorized to create a model.
The Ethics Co-laboratory as a Space for Cultivating Character in Professional Life
This paper presents the ‘ethics co-laboratory’ (e-co-lab) as developed by the ethics working group of the International Collaboration for Participatory Health Research. The e-co-lab is a space (virtual and real) and a methodology (encompassing a participatory paradigm and participatory methods). This paper considers the role of the e-co-lab in cultivating one element (ethical sensitivity) of one virtue (phronesis) in a professional context (participatory research). We will examine ethics cases from through different lenses (microscopic, telescopic, varifocal). We will conclude by considering ways the e-co-lab enables moral character to be ‘caught, taught and sought’.
A Model of Temperament – Personality – Character: Brought – Caught – Taught – Sought
Despite growing interest in character education, conceptual precision concerning the terms character, personality, temperament, and related constructs remains underdeveloped in many educational contexts. This paper offers a critical examination of relevant philosophical and psychological traditions and proposes an integrative conceptual model based on personality, temperament and character that extends the familiar triadic framework of caught, taught, and sought by introducing a fourth dimension: brought. This dimension represents the inborn or inherited dispositions that form the temperamental basis of personality. “Brought” may refer to temperament, brought and caught to personality and caught, taught and sought to character.
Character Taught and Caught: How Dialogic Moral Reflection and Teacher´s Interpersonal Behaviour Bridges the Knowledge-Action Gap in Students´ Learning for Respect
The paper presents a research design and initial data from an intervention study (Nstudents=180, Nteachers=12) examining the impact of a program on developing “respect for others”. Respect is conceptualized allocentrically in three dimensions (affective participation, personalistic normativity, and behavioural practice) and four developmental levels. Dependent variables include students’ behaviour, moral identity, and argumentation for human dignity, with social desirability controlled. Two key mediators/moderators are lesson quality (dialogical approach, virtue-focused structure of moral reflection) and teachers’ interpersonal behaviour. Using dilemmas, peer/teacher assessments, and identity measures, we hypothesize that program content and teaching quality enhance respect while reducing the knowledge–action gap.
A Teaching Moment: Failure and the Humility It Gives Rise To
Considering the the 20th century mystic Simone Weil’s understanding of the virtue of humility alongside the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel’s work on embarrassment and the philosopher Costica Bradatan’s recent scholarship on the value of experiencing failure, this presentation will argue that humility is a virtue that must be caught, taught, and sought in various contexts, but only in light of our shortcomings and not our successes.
Developing a Character Curriculum Across 56 Secondary Schools
At United Learning we are developing a structured Character Curriculum for our now 56 secondary schools, grounded in the ethos of ‘character plus intelligence’. Inspired by Gandhi’s warning against ‘knowledge without character’, the curriculum aims to develop two aspects: ‘being of good character’ and ‘having character’. It will integrate into tutor time and assembly time primarily but augments an approach that character should be in all aspects of school life. It is being designed as a progressive scheme from Year 7 to Year 10. Balancing consistency with school individuality, it aims to be ‘systematic, not overly prescriptive’. A pilot began in September 2025, with full rollout in 2026, supporting students’ academic success and character development through measurable, evidence-based character education.
Depth and Breadth Model: A Dual-Axis Approach to Sustainable, Technology-Enabled Character Development
Leadership development programs often underperform due to an overemphasis on competencies and insufficient attention to sustained character formation. Even when character is prioritized, efforts frequently fall short of cultivating it as a lifelong, embodied practice that translates across real-world contexts. The Depth and Breadth Model addresses this gap, proposing that character must be developed both deeply – through deliberate, habitual practice – and broadly – across time and settings. Drawing on virtue ethics, developmental theory, and behavioural science, this framework illustrates how digital tools can enable scalable, context-sensitive development, offering a practical and sustainable approach to enduring character and leadership growth.
Character Education, Ethical Naturalism, and the Philosophy of Nature
This presentation examines how neo-Aristotelian character education and its ethical naturalistic base depend on a robust philosophy of nature in order to defend their naturalistic credentials. I suggest that Philippa Foot’s ‘Natural Goodness’ offers a model in that respect. Yet interpretations often misconstrue her project as a kind of scientistic naturalism. I contend that the Foot-Thompson tradition, enriched by contemporary philosophy of nature, can meet challenges regarding biology, reason, and normativity. Drawing on Walsh’s teleological account of biological emergence and contemporary hylomorphist metaphysics of causal powers, the paper will defend Foot’s natural normativity in a novel way.
Can Courage be Cultivated? On the Pursuit of Moral Courage in the Accountancy Profession
Amid costly corporate collapses and audit failures, accountants are increasingly called on to demonstrate courage. This raises the question whether moral courage can be cultivated?
In this paper I argue, based on preliminary empirical evidence, that the Jubilee Centre’s framework for character development holds in relation to the cardinal virtue of courage. It is possible to improve one’s confidence in the face of occupational threats, for instance, through pedagogical and cultural interventions. Two caveats are added, however: first, supporting studies often depend on surveys and self-perception; second, encouraging moral courage in the absence of supporting environments may itself be reckless.
Fostering Belonging through Character Education, to Support a School Culture of Flourishing
This talk highlights the University of Birmingham School’s character education framework, built on the principles of character caught, taught, and sought. Emphasizing belonging, the School draws students from diverse backgrounds across Birmingham, enriching its community while facing unique challenges. Rooted in practical wisdom – doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons – the ethos aligns with the core aim: Together, We Flourish. The session will detail how character education shapes key aspects of school life, including attendance, pastoral care, wellbeing, and behaviour, all through a lens of community-building and shared values.
From Vision to Practice: Integrating the Caught, Taught, and Sought Model through the Canyon Center for Character Education
This session examines the strategic development and implementation of character education resources by the Canyon Center for Character Education (CCCE) at Grand Canyon University. Anchored in the Caught, Taught, and Sought framework, CCCE’s comprehensive initiatives, including the Activities and Applications: Character Education Book, professional development programs, and digital tools, integrate theory with practice to advance PK–12 character formation. The presentation will detail the collaborative design process, alignment with virtue-based pedagogy, and field applications. Participants will engage with adaptable resources and research-informed strategies that foster school cultures of character, contributing to broader scholarly and practical discourse on scalable character education.
The Aristotelian Virtue of Friendship
Friendship is an important everyday topic, suggesting that common wisdom could easily manage it. Unfortunately, Western common-sense views portray friendship as an emotionally intimate, affinity- and choice-based personal relationship that has been made a largely subjective concept. This is a very time- and culturally-bound interpretation because many understandings of friendship exist within and across scholarly disciplines, cultures, and times. These varying interpretations of friendship differ from the Western, psychologized view in virtually every respect. Nevertheless, despite the facts that human friendship has evolutionary roots and psychological elements, purely evolutionary or psychological accounts have been inadequate, partly because they are under-theorized. Therefore, friendship theory is important, and Aristotle’s theory is one of the few well-articulated views of this common, but vital relationship.
Caught, Taught, and Sought: Evolving to a Quadripartite Conceptualisation
Globally, there is an increasing interest among universities and businesses in cultivating character leadership. Many of these organizations have been inspired by the Jubilee Centre’s caught, taught and sought as was The University of Hong Kong’s character leadership programme, Lead for Life (L4L). Last academic year, L4L engaged over 600 students and 110 mentors. This paper, by one of L4L’s founding designers, demonstrates how Jubilee’s tripartite conceptualisation helped with the programme’s early design and explores expanding the conceptualisation into a quadripartite framework to better help emerging adults cultivate character leadership. It offers a high-level roadmap and shares qualitative research of lived experiences from L4L mentors and students.
Character Development Implementation: Leadership and Practitioner Roles in Secondary Education
This paper explores how the Jubilee Centre’s ‘taught, caught, sought’ framework for character development can be applied in schools, focusing on the balance of responsibility between leaders and practitioners. Drawing on three secondary school case studies, it examines: senior leadership shaping strategy through training, reviews, and departmental leads; pastoral staff in a new boarding house fostering character through daily interactions; and social action programmes connecting students to global citizenship. Findings show that effective character education requires distributed moral leadership: strategic support from leaders combined with practitioner autonomy, ensuring staff buy-in and authentic modelling of virtues in everyday practice.
Tackling Complex Problems to Teach Inquiry and Civic Engagement in General Education: Character Education as a University-wide Initiative
How do you structure a university education so that students graduate with both the skills and the innate desire to serve in their communities? At Brigham Young University, we have begun to frame General Education classes through the lens of inquiry-driven learning so that students can practice solving specific, real-world problems such as sustainable food production, poverty alleviation, or climate change. As students apply intellectual and civic virtues such as curiosity, open-mindedness, and citizenship in their wrestle with these complex societal issues, they are better able to see how higher education contributes to human flourishing (eudaimonia).
Reflective Practice in Character Formation: A Tri-Axial Framework
The Tri-Axial Framework for Reflective Practice integrates Aristotelian virtue ethics, Deweyan inquiry, and the Christian worldview to clarify reflection’s role in character formation within Christian higher education. The three axes of Readiness (wisdom, courage, justice), Direction (faith, hope, love toward the telos of Christ-like character), and Regulation (temperance with Dewey’s qualities characteristic of interest) link structured reflection to virtuous action. The framework addresses the gap between knowledge and action by giving reflection explicit evaluative and normative criteria and by showing how established character education strategies can be reinterpreted within this structure.
Tradition in the Formation, Development and Modification of Character
An interest in the development of character, particularly a practical and educational interest, is apt to be concerned with the causes, conditions and limits of character formation, and the prospects for resolving apparent tension between various qualities which it would seem desirable to conjoin. Even if the trio of possible routes to character formation: ‘caught, taught, and sought’ are not presumed to be incompatible, there are questions about how they may relate to one another, and to what extent they may fruitfully be interwoven. I shall explore these questions by introducing a factor not hitherto mentioned, namely tradition, both in the literal active sense of ‘delivering’ (tradens) to another that which one has received, and in the broader sense of a historically realised framework of assumptions, values skills and practices within which one thinks and acts.
Caught, Taught, and Sought: A Framework for Character Education in PE Teacher Training
This presentation explores caught, taught, and sought character education embedded in Physical Education (PE) teacher training. Trainee teachers critically examine the purpose of PE, engaging in values-based inquiry to develop moral and pedagogical clarity. Character-driven pedagogy is taught through theory and discussion, caught via immersive experiences and expert observation, and sought through formative teaching practice. This approach seeks to encourage future PE teachers to deliver inclusive, meaningful, and character-enriching PE, aligning with contemporary curriculum needs.
Does a Values-based Organisational Framework Influence Development of Nurses’ Characters and Virtues?
The term ‘Phronesis’ remains relatively unknown to Welsh nurses. Practice appears policy-and procedure-driven, for risk minimization to achieve targets. One Health Board inductively designed nine, ‘guiding-light’ personal values for a healthy, kind, collegial organization. Aims: To explore nurses’ perceptions and influence of organizational and personal values on character and practice; to discuss emerging themes from newly-introduced reflective ‘Restorative Clinical Supervision’ used for learning and restoring well-being. These perspectives advance understanding on whether nurses have ‘caught,’ ‘sought’ or been ‘taught’ values, including within supervision and whether nurses currently balance and reconcile service demands and patient care, to manage moral distress.
A Student-Centred Understanding of What Enhances and Hinders Character Development in Higher Education
There remains limited empirical evidence examining the typology of character ‘caught’, ‘taught’ and ‘sought’ in practice – particularly in higher education. Several universities in the Netherlands articulate their (desired) role in fostering character alongside knowledge and skills, thus research must investigate whether these goals are met. It is especially important to assess how students actually experience their own character development. Therefore, we ask: ‘What external and internal factors enhance and hinder character development, and how do they translate into practical advice?’ Results suggest that students may find it hard to associate some aspects of character education with academic life.
Catching, Teaching and Seeking Character Online: A Conceptual Framework for Micro-Interventions in Digital Space
This presentation proposes an integrative framework for character formation in digital environments. Grounded in Whole Trait Theory, brief “micro-interventions” deliver psycho-educational content (taught), leverage platform norms and role models (caught), and support self-directed goal-setting (sought). Digital platforms can enable precisely timed prompts to promote manifestations of specific character virtues based on real-time behavioral data. This interdisciplinary approach bridges virtue ethics, moral psychology, education, and human-computer interaction.
Character in Medical Education: Challenges and Opportunities Illuminated by the Framework of “Sought, Taught, and Caught”
Instead of virtues and character, ethics in medical education tends to prioritize ethical principles and utilitarian outcomes. This neglect is arguably due to the absence of a shared telos that grounds concepts of health and flourishing and provides a foundation for virtue ethics. Nevertheless, strategies are needed to encourage the cultivation of moral character among healthcare students, teachers, and institutions. Such strategies are reflected by the Jubilee Centre’s three means of developing character as it is “sought, taught, and caught.” Relevance of this framework will be illustrated and recommended as a way to promote virtue ethics in medical education.
Institutional Exemplars as Communities of Character: A View from the Educating Character Initiative
The character formation we want to be caught, taught, and sought is embedded in and supported by the institutions and communities of character we build around them. In 2023 the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University launched the Educating Character Initiative (ECI) to support the cultivation of character at U.S. colleges and universities. In this session, Michael Lamb and Jennifer Rothschild will report progress and perspectives on ECI grantee efforts to create cross-institutional, contextually aligned character programs, sharing lessons learned from these institutional exemplars as they transform cultures of character in higher education.
Cultivating Practical Wisdom in Medical Education
A physician must combine technical competence with good character. In this talk, I describe a course to help medical trainees hone virtues of character and practical wisdom. Throughout the course, physicians highlight common challenges faced in medicine (e.g. delivering bad news), and lead a discussion centered on their own experiences of trying to navigate them well. Participants increase on measures of wise reasoning, well-being, and other virtues. The course can be feasibly implemented at other institutions by engaged physicians – without need for specialized training – and focuses on issues pertinent to routine medical practice.
Friendship and Bonding Feelings: Extending Aristotle’s Perspective on Virtue and Emotion
In a hyper-connected world, loneliness grows. If the Good Life (eudaimonia) is our goal, it cannot be lived alone. This paper asks whether deep friendship includes a distinct emotional dimension. Objectives: (1) to examine the link between eudaimonia and bonding feelings in character friendship; (2) to propose ways to nurture such friendship in higher education. Argument: emotions are integral to human action; different relationships involve distinct emotions; character friendship entails selfless acts that elicit bonding feelings. Educational implications: cultivate (a) generous action; (b) relative equality; and (c) shared aims. Mentoring and reflective dialogue help students grow in these areas.
A Reflective Approach to Leading with Character in Turbulent Times
Urgent and sweeping change requires leaders to make difficult choices, often with little time for careful thought or inclusive consultation. We suggest that such situations call for examination of experiences, feelings and actions in relationship to the individual good (character development), institutional good (mission alignment), and societal good (shared responsibility). Applying the KNN Framework for Flourishing (Maurana et al., 2024), we offer reflection questions for integration into practice and scholarship. Using themes representing institutional conflicts commonly occurring in academic medicine, we offer an iterative approach to reflection to help leaders recognize and navigate tensions between multiple goods.
Opus Prize Encounters: Moral Exemplars and Unsung Heroes
The annual Opus Prize awards (US$1.2 million) recognize the work and commitments of faith-based, unsung heroes who use innovative ideas and entrepreneurial mindsets to address persisting social challenges within their communities. Through a unique model, the Opus Prize Foundation collaborates with a different university partner each year, involving students and faculty in the process as ambassadors who visit the communities of the finalists for that year’s awards. The high-impact practice of making purposeful site visits allows university ambassadors to see what a life of service looks like, to see faith as a verb, to see faith in action.
The Alma Project: Promoting Neighborliness at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
How can character virtues be cultivated at a large, pluralistic, public university? In this presentation, we introduce a model for civic character education at scale for the University of Illinois and its peer institutions. We leverage a beloved campus symbol, the Alma Mater statue, as a heuristic for students to refine the character virtue of neighborliness (character “caught”). This virtue is then embedded in courses via our We CU service-learning program (character “taught”). Finally, we foster neighborliness development through self-reflection activities, prompting students to consider how their choices and actions (character “sought”) will help them be good neighbors.
Virtue Acquisition and Psychological Well-being: The Intersection Between the Aretai Model and the Proben Project
This paper examines how virtue acquisition fosters psychological well-being, especially among university students. Drawing on virtue ethics, moral psychology, and the Proben research-action project, I argue that moral and emotional development are interdependent and can be cultivated through context-sensitive education. Using the phronetic framework of the Aretai Model – integrating emotion, reason, and action – I link virtue formation to emotional regulation and decision-making. I criticise purely exemplar-based pedagogy and propose a maieutic, dialogical approach that promotes moral emotions and virtue through relational dialogue. I outline a model of phronetic education that unites virtue cultivation and psychological flourishing within applied well-being interventions.
Beyond Measurement: Fostering Dispositions of Judgement for Lifelong Character Growth
In Singapore, Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) aims to develop character, social-emotional well-being, and citizenship dispositions. Assessment in CCE is challenging as constructs are multi-faceted and creating a comprehensive, objective measure is difficult. With limited research on assessment methods in CCE, a multiple-case study was conducted to examine how the principles of self-referential sustainable assessment are applied, in order to understand how assessment can support virtue development as character is ‘caught,’ ‘taught,’ and ‘sought’ within schools. The study sought to guide educational processes to focus on stimulating virtue development through developing dispositions to make complex judgements for life-long character growth.
Aristotle’s Moral Ecology: Teaching, Seeking, and Catching the Virtues
The 20th century brought a renaissance of virtue ethics. Philosophical analysis of Aristotelian texts has considerably advanced virtue theory and practice. Much remains to be understood, however, about the context of character formation. Aristotle assumed that certain institutional conditions –domestic, civic, political, educational, and religious – would assist in teaching the virtues; seeking the virtues in athletics, music, visual and performing arts, military, and commerce; and “catching” virtues in the social and civic associations of Athens and other poleis. Drawing on historiographic, archaeological, and epigraphic sources, this paper begins filling out the cultural picture of formation and identifies implications for practice.
Virtue Ethics in the Core Curriculum of the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria
This paper aims to address the ethical question proposed by the “Expanded Reason” program, developed by the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria and its partner universities. Within the framework of the University’s Center for Virtues and Values, we examine and discuss this central ethical question, arguing that virtue ethics is the most adequate ethical approach to respond to it. As a first-person ethics, virtue ethics focuses on the moral agent rather than on isolated actions, emphasizing the cultivation of virtues, the development of character, and the exercise of practical wisdom. This perspective highlights the ethical significance of self-formation and responsibility, offering an integrated view of moral life that unites reason, emotion, and human flourishing.
Towards a New Psychometric Measure for Evaluating Individual Engagement with Character Development Strategies
The seven strategies of character development (Lamb et al., 2021) describe different mechanisms through which character can be developed. Despite their increasing popularity, there is currently no measure to assess the degree of an individual’s engagement with each of the seven strategies. This paper presents a new project designed to develop a psychometrically valid and reliable measure to this end. We will present (i) the rationale for measure development, (ii) the variety of applications we envisage for the measure, (iii) the current study design, and finally, (iv) provide updates and insights on our progress to date.
Simulation Based Education: A Tool to Nurture Professional Character in Healthcare
There is increasing recognition in the medical education literature of the importance of practical wisdom for healthcare professionals. Rooted in neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics, practical wisdom and professional character in the healthcare workforce are purported to help address challenges such as applying generalised evidence to individual decisions, managing uncertainty, finite resources, healthcare consumerism and workforce discontent. Simulation Based Learning (SBL) is a widely utilised technique to recreate and amplify clinical learning experiences safely with a strong evidence base for both technical and non-technical learning outcomes. This work considers SBL as a novel pedagogy for the development of professional character.
Building a Free Scalable Online Character Course – What the Founders Meant by ‘Happiness’: A Journey through Virtue and Character
This presentation introduces a scalable, open-access course created by Arizona State University and the National Constitution Center. Based on Jeffrey Rosen’s The Pursuit of Happiness, the course explores how classical virtue shaped the American founders’ vision of flourishing and civic duty. Grounded in Principled Innovation, the course focuses on Jubilee Centre’s notion of character taught. The course provides a framework to cultivate civic identity and character at scale. Designed for broad access, it provides a pathway from free learning to credit-bearing credentials, modeling how institutions can democratize character education while reinforcing constitutional values and civic flourishing.
MCW Practical Wisdom Pathway: A Human-Centered Approach to Accessing and Deepening Practical Wisdom in Medical Student Learning Communities
Our work began by supporting faculty in understanding and accessing their own practical wisdom (PW) to foster PW development and virtue literacy in their medical students. We used a human-centered design approach to engage faculty through workshops and qualitative research as well as literature reviews and exemplar collaborations to develop a reflection and deliberation model, the MCW Practical Wisdom Pathway, which is now being taught to all medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The Pathway includes visual tools to aid discussions, including character strength dials and an integrated model of how character strengths, practical wisdom and flourishing interact.
Individual Flourishing between Destiny and Duty: Platonic-Aristotelian Remarks on Opportunities and Limits of ‘becoming who you are’
Character education is based on prerequisites and factors that can shape or influence the development of individual flourishing to a greater or lesser extent. Up to the present day, these influencing factors have repeatedly been discussed and re-prioritized. In ancient philosophy, there were already similarly intense discussions about the limitations and enablers of self-development in view of fate, social factors, and, not least, one’s own predispositions. This paper aims to shed some light on fundamental and still relevant insights that can be gained from the Platonic-Aristotelian understanding of character education.
Character Caught, Taught, and Sought through Physical Education and Sports in Singapore Schools: A Mixed-Methods Intervention Study
This mixed-methods research examines how character is cultivated through Physical Education and Sport (PES) in Singaporean schools. Grounded in the Positive Youth Development framework, three sequential studies explored how character is caught, taught, and sought across contexts. Study 1 identified effective practices and gaps in educators’ intentional teaching of values and life skills. These insights informed the 10-week intervention, which significantly enhanced students’ values, life skills, and motivation, with sustained effects. Study 3 confirmed motivation as a key mediator of developmental outcomes. Findings highlight PES as a powerful, evidence-based platform for holistic character education and youth development.
Covenantal Pluralism as Character Building: A Case of Character Being “Sought”
Covenantal pluralism is a pattern of interaction across religious boundaries that is peaceful, productive, characterized by engagement, and respectful of difference and the integrity of each party. The possession of intellectual humility and courage are critical pathways for covenantal pluralism. Growth in intellectual humility and courage is facilitated by the concomitant development of phronesis in the context of engagement across religious differences. Two roles for phronesis, emotion regulation and reflection on one’s life as a whole, are especially valuable in facilitating virtue development in the context of achieving and sustaining covenantally pluralistic engagement.
Questioning Virtue: Responding to Faculty Concerns about Incorporating Virtue Education in University Courses
Brigham Young University’s Center for Teaching and Learning worked together with Undergraduate Education to help faculty incorporate character development more explicitly into our new curricula. While conducting the workshops, we found that the faculty had four main questions about this new initiative:
1. “Why now?” 2. “Why the word ‘virtue’?” 3. “How can virtue be measured?” 4. “How will it influence student behaviour?”
This paper will explore how we addressed these faculty concerns, enabling them to develop new courses that included character education. Faculty who completed the workshop and taught redesigned versions of their courses had overwhelmingly positive experiences.
Educating Ethical Value and Virtuous Emotion through Pop Song Lyrics
Recent interest in popstars and pop songs has extended beyond the music to the economics of their fame, or profile beyond the stage/recording studio, and onto academic interest in philosophies behind song lyrics. Many pop lyrics embrace themes of emotional and ethical challenge, presented in aesthetically pleasing packages to engage listeners. This paper will present a case for considering pop lyrics as tools for moral development by interrogating the ethical value that they hold and show how they can be used to explore themes of emotion and ethics in educational settings.
Comprehensive Virtue Ethics Education in a Collegiate Business School: Activating Two Paths to Human Flourishing
This study explores the implementation of a comprehensive program of virtue ethics education within one collegiate business school. Drawing on Aristotle’s conception of human flourishing as the ultimate goal and Aquinas’s insistence on practical wisdom as foundational to other moral virtues, this research highlights a comprehensive approach that activates two paths to human flourishing – one through practical wisdom and the other through virtuous character. Building on Berkowitz’s PRIMED framework, the study identifies specific curricular and co-curricular actions taken to enhance character formation. Preliminary findings reveal strong correlations between the program and growth in practical wisdom, virtuous character, and human flourishing.
Beyond the Tripartite: Context-Based Character Education Embedded in the Humanities
This presentation explores a practice-led, research-informed approach to context-based character education within the Humanities curriculum. Drawing on insights from over 750 students and staff across two contrasting Australian school campuses, we consider how character formation unfolds when not only taught, caught, and sought but also contextualised. Using mixed methods, we investigated students’ conceptions of the good life and human flourishing. Findings highlight that meaningful character development is shaped by local influences, inviting reflection on the tripartite framework and proposing context as a potential fourth dimension bridging theory, pedagogy, and lived educational experience.
Catching Character through Phronetic Teachers
In our talk, we will explore how education can more effectively promote human flourishing through the cultivation of virtue and practical wisdom. Drawing on Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia and the Jubilee Centre’s framework for character education – where character is caught, taught, and sought – we emphasize the pivotal role of teachers as moral exemplars within school communities. Building on the Aretai Center’s model of virtue monism, we will discuss how teachers can embody and teach phronesis (practical wisdom) through four core capacities: moral perception, deliberation, emotion regulation, and motivation.
From Intellectual Virtues to Flourishing: The Mediating Role of Virtuous Moral Character in Higher Education
Some scholars argue that flourishing is a central aim of education, emphasising its role in shaping students’ character, purpose, and relationships. This paper presents empirical research with university students in Argentina, examining how intellectual virtues relate to flourishing through the mediation of a virtuous moral character. Studies 1 and 2 validated a Virtuous Moral Character Scale, and Study 3 tested the proposed theoretical model. Results reveal that intellectual virtues predict virtuous moral character (24% of variance explained), which in turn is associated with human flourishing (19% of variance explained), underscoring the formative importance of intellectual virtues in higher education.
Becoming Virtuous Communicators: Teaching Character Development in First-Year Writing
This paper examines how Brigham Young University (BYU) integrated explicit character development into Writing 150, our required first-year writing course that serves nearly 6,000 students annually. The new curriculum draws on virtue ethics theories from Aristotle, Baehr, and Duffy and rhetorical theories of argument from Caulfield, Kroll, and Ratcliffe. This paper addresses challenges we faced: developing pedagogical resources, overcoming faculty resistance, providing adequate faculty training, and designing assessment strategies to measure the curriculum’s effectiveness. I use BYU as a case study to provide guidance for administrators who want to implement durable character-focused pedagogy at an institutional level.
Educating for the Greater Good: How Professional Communities of Practice Support Character Development in Schools
Educators all over the world are facing unprecedented challenges that require a nuanced understanding not only of character, but of human nature itself. To foster this kind of understanding is a lifelong journey that takes committed effort to continually reflect upon and improve one’s own practice of virtue. This paper provides an overview of the design, implementation, and impact of Greater Good Educators, a community of practice developed by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center that builds the capacity of individual educators and schools to create a safe and supportive space for the adults in schools to nurture their own character, while at the same time, broadening their understanding of the complexity of virtue practice so that they can better teach and model these virtues for students.
Eudaimonic and Hedonic Well-being with Friends: A Philosophical and Psychological Study of Adolescent Friendship in Social Media and In-person Settings
This interdisciplinary study explored adolescent friendships in face-to-face and social media contexts, examining their relationship with eudaimonic and hedonic well-being. An online quantitative survey of 1,061 adolescents (ages 12-18) in Spain and Mexico revealed significant differences. Face-to-face interactions were rated higher across most friendship dimensions, including self-disclosure, affection, trust, and closeness, while reciprocity was higher on social media. Face-to-face friendship significantly predicted both eudaimonic and hedonic well-being, whereas social media interactions did not. The findings highlight the central role of in-person interactions in adolescent well-being.
