Character Education In Europe Challenges And Opportunities

The book aims to highlight the distinct challenges and opportunities that character education faces across several European countries, including Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain. By examining character education landscapes in these diverse contexts, this work provides insights into specific hurdles and potential avenues for advancement in promoting character development and positive impact across the region and beyond. Through a detailed analysis of country reports, practices, and research findings, the book sheds light on varying approaches to character education. It emphasizes the need for tailored strategies that resonate with each country"s cultural, social, and educational landscapes. These approaches, including traditional, liberal, psychological, and neo-Aristotelian, share a common goal of fostering strong character dispositions but diverge in their philosophical foundations, pedagogical methods, and political assumptions. While European character education grapples with significant challenges, its multifaceted approaches —particularly the neo-Aristotelian— offer robust strategies for developing character dispositions. By overcoming these challenges and harnessing the highlighted opportunities, character education in Europe has the potential to effectively address contemporary educational and societal needs and contribute to more flourishing school environments.

Literature and Character Education in Universities presents the potential of literary and philosophical texts for character education in modern universities. The book engages with theoretical and practical aspects of character development in higher education, combining conceptual discussion of the role of literature in character education with applied case studies from university classrooms. Character education within the academic context of the university presents unique challenges and opportunities. Literature and Character Education in Universities presents perspectives from academics in Europe, the USA and Asia, offering unique insights into the ways that engaged reading and discussion of core texts can promote the development of intellectual and moral virtues. Chapters draw on a wide range of texts from Confucius’ Analects to J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, focusing on themes such as truthfulness, self-knowledge, prudence, tolerance, friendship, and humility. Literature and Character Education in Universities will be of real use to researchers, academics and postgraduates in the fields of higher education, philosophy, and literature. It should be essential reading for university educators interested in character development and advocates of literary education in modern universities.

Index for Social Emotional Technologies explores how technology can strengthen access and foster the acquisition of transversal skills useful for inclusive educational processes. It investigates the value that technology can offer to social and emotional learning through different tiers of actions and the main features of educational technology that can support such use. The book brings together educational technologies and research evidence relevant to different education systems to outline new, unexplored ways of intersecting educational and technological fields. It also addresses the need for a guide to designing and creating new inclusive educational tools for an international market. Index for Social Emotional Technologies will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of inclusive education, educational technology, and social and emotional learning.

This collection presents new investigations into the role of heritage languages and the correlation between culture and language from a pedagogic and cosmopolitical point of view.

Understanding Character Education introduces readers to the key ideas, practices and concepts that are shaping character education in schools today. The book explores the principles underpinning character education and the pedagogical practices which ensure it comes alive in schools. Each chapter includes a variety of features to help navigate through the ideas, themes and practices examined. These include: •Chapter objectives to help readers understand the core focus and intentions of each chapter •Reflective activities to help readers to think more deeply about particular ideas and issues, and to consider how practices described are, or could be, applied in their own contexts •Case studies to help readers to understand how character education is approached and implemented by educators in and beyond schools •Annotated further readings to help readers take a closer and more detailed look at the methods, applications and issues covered This book is essential reading for all those involved in the teaching and learning of young people, as well as those studying this vital topic on education studies, teacher education and postgraduate level courses. “Highly recommended for all leaders and practitioners dedicated to enabling children and young people to flourish through the development of good character.” Tom Haigh, CEO, Association for Character Education “I wish Chapter 2: The Character of the Teacher was made a compulsory read for every person working in a UK school; that would be transformational.” Nat Parnell, Regional Director, United Learning “A must read for all trainee teachers of any phase.” Catherine Carden, Director of Learning and Teaching, Faculty of Arts Humanities & Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK Paul Watts is a Lecturer at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, UK. He has worked closely with school leaders and teachers in the research and development of character education. Michael Fullard is a Research Fellow at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, UK, having previously been a primary school teacher in the UK for 9 years. Andrew Peterson is Professor of Character and Citizenship Education at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, University of Birmingham, UK. He has worked with a number of schools to develop their approaches to character education.

This book offers substantive insights for researchers, policy makers, and teachers concerned with the effective inclusion of refugees within education by systematically collecting and comparing the growing body of knowledge that is emerging from eight European countries.

There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have mandates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological rhetoric of the field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last fifteen years and points forward to the future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of developmental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings, and much more.

Against the backdrop of labour migration and the ongoing refugee crisis, the ways in which Islam is taught and engaged with in educational settings has become a major topic of contention in Europe. Recognising the need for academic engagement around the challenges and benefits of effective Islamic Religious Education (IRE), this volume offers a comparative study of curricula, teaching materials, and teacher education in fourteen European countries, and in doing so, explores local, national, and international complexities of contemporary IRE. Considering the ways in which Islam is taught and represented in state schools, public Islamic schools, and non-confessional classes, Part One of this volume includes chapters which survey the varying degrees to which fourteen European States have adopted IRE into curricula, and considers the impacts of varied teaching models on Muslim populations. Moving beyond individual countries’ approaches to IRE, chapters in Part Two offer multi-disciplinary perspectives – from the hermeneutical-critical to the postcolonial – to address challenges posed by religious teachings on issues such as feminism, human rights, and citizenship, and the ways these are approached in European settings. Given its multi-faceted approach, this book will be an indispensable resource for postgraduate students, scholars, stakeholders and policymakers working at the intersections of religion, education and policy on religious education.