CMEI Colloquium
Larsen Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
March 31, 2016
The history of character education in the U.S. is long and convoluted, leading to many different "flavors" and many misconceptions. This presentation presented a model of character education that is primarily focused on positive, pro-social, and democratic development, providing both a rationale for this work and a circumscribed definition. It relied on research to identify common denominator parenting and pedagogical factors that effectively promote such development.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Marvin W. Berkowitz is the inaugural Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education, and Co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and University of Missouri System Thomas Jefferson Fellow. He was the inaugural Ambassador H.H. Coors Professor of Character Development at the US Air Force Academy (1999), and Professor of Psychology at Marquette University (1979-1999). He earned his Ph.D. in Life-span Developmental Psychology at Wayne State University in 1977. His scholarly focus and expertise is in character education and development. He is author of Parenting for Good (2005), You Can’t Teach Through a Rat: And Other Epiphanies for Educators (2012), and more than 100 book chapters, monographs, and journal articles. He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Character Education. He has served as P.I. on numerous grant projects (John Templeton Foundation, US Department of Education, NIDA, SJ Bechtel Jr. Foundation, etc.).
