Effectiveness

Findings

The WWC review of character education addresses student outcomes in three domains: behavior; knowledge, attitudes, and values; and academic achievement.

Knowledge, attitudes, and values. Leming reported findings for seven measures for this outcome domain: ethical awareness, ethical responsibility, ethical perspective, self-esteem, social responsibility (general), social responsibility (school), and anticipated future community participation. Leming reported statistically significant differences favoring the Building Decision Skills group on four student outcomes (ethical awareness, ethical responsibility, ethical perspective, and social responsibility-school), and one of these outcomes, ethical perspective, was found to be statistically significant (as calculated by the WWC).³ However, Leming found no statistically significant impact on self-esteem, social responsibility (general), and anticipated future community participation. The average effect across all seven outcomes was large enough to be considered substantively important, using WWC criteria, although it was not statistically significant.

Rating of effectiveness

The WWC rates interventions as positive, potentially positive, mixed, no discernible effects, potentially negative, or negative. The rating of effectiveness takes into account four factors: the quality of the research design, the statistical significance of the findings (as calculated by the WWC), the size of the difference between participants in the intervention and the comparison conditions, and the consistency in findings across studies (see the WWC Intervention Rating Scheme).