In short
- Reading can carry character education on three conditions: stories chosen for a value, a planned discussion, and something pupils do with the value afterwards.
- Berkowitz and Bier (2007) reviewed 33 effective programs and found that they tended to share interactive teaching, an explicit focus on character and staff training.
- In Narvaez and colleagues (1999), understanding of a story's moral differed by age even after accounting for reading comprehension, so check what pupils took away.
- Record the stories and values a class has met, and never grade, rank or reward a child's character.
Character education is often run as a separate track: an assembly, a weekly lesson, a poster in the corridor. A reading lesson already holds what that track needs, because so many stories turn on a character's choice. This article reports what reviews of character education found, and what they did not test. It reports the finding that children often miss a story's intended moral. Then it sets out a term plan: choose the values, match the stories, plan the talk, and plan what pupils do outside the story.
Can reading carry a school's character education?
Yes, on three conditions. The stories are chosen for a value as well as for their level. The class talks about the story, and each pupil says what it taught. And the value is tied to something pupils do after the book is closed. A story read once, with nothing around it, is a weak tool.
- Chosen. Each story shows one value at work in its plot, such as honesty, kindness, courage, perseverance, fairness or responsibility.
- Talked about. Pupils discuss the character's choice and put the lesson into their own words.
- Tied to action. Pupils do something small and concrete with the value, in class or around the school.
Reading suits this work for a practical reason. A story's plot is the vehicle for vocabulary and comprehension. It is very often the vehicle for a character's hard choice too. So the language lesson and the character lesson can share the same class time, provided the talk and the doing are planned.
What did reviews of character education find?
Two reviews are worth knowing. Both studied character education programs as a whole. Neither tested reading on its own.
Berkowitz and Bier (2007) reviewed the research base for effective practice. They identified 33 effective programs. They examined 64 studies of those programs, plus 5 meta-analyses and literature reviews. They conclude that character education can work when it is implemented broadly and with fidelity.
They also listed the practices those programs most often shared. Effective character education tended to include:
- Professional development for staff.
- Interactive teaching strategies, in which pupils take an active part.
- An explicit focus on character or ethics.
- Direct training of social and emotional skills.
- Modelling of character.
- Classroom and behaviour management that fits the program.
- Community service or service learning.
Jeynes (2019) combined 52 studies in a meta-analysis. Character education was associated with higher educational outcomes, on standardised and non-standardised measures alike. It was also related to higher levels of expressed love, integrity, compassion and self-discipline. The effects were somewhat greater for pupils in high school than for those in elementary school.
The limits of this evidence
- Both reviews cover whole programs. They do not show what a reading lesson adds.
- The list from Berkowitz and Bier (2007) describes what effective programs had in common. A shared feature is not proof that the feature caused the result.
- Jeynes (2019) reports that character education is associated with better outcomes. We read the abstract, which does not describe how each study was designed.
- The summaries we read report no results for pupils learning English as a foreign language.
What can a reading teacher take from the list? A discussion of a character's choice is interactive teaching. Naming the value gives the lesson an explicit focus on character. That is our reading of the list, not a finding of the review.
Do pupils take away the moral the story intends?
Often they do not.
Narvaez, Gleason, Mitchell and Bentley (1999) tested whether children can extract the theme from a moral story. Pupils in third and fifth grade, and university students, read several moral stories and were tested on the lesson of each.
Understanding of the moral theme differed between the age groups. The differences were still significant after the researchers accounted for reading comprehension. This suggests that grasping a story's moral takes more than following its events.
Narvaez (2002) drew the wider conclusion in a review. She challenged the assumption that children build moral literacy by reading or hearing moral stories. Readers differ in reading skill and background knowledge, so they do not understand a text in the same way. Children do not extract moral story themes as the writer intended.
One experiment gives a hint about which stories to choose. Lee, Talwar, McCarthy, Ross, Evans and Arruda (2014) compared four classic moral stories with children aged 3 to 7. 'Pinocchio' and 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf' failed to reduce lying. 'George Washington and the Cherry Tree' significantly increased truth-telling. The authors' further results suggest the reason. That story emphasises the good consequences of honesty. The other two focus on the bad consequences of lying.
Treat it with care. It is one experiment, on honesty only, with children younger than most pupils who read graded stories in English. The guide to teaching values through stories sets out this evidence in full.
For an English class the lesson is plain. Do not assume the moral landed. Ask each pupil what the story taught, and read what they write.
A term plan in four steps
The plan below is practice, built to fit the findings above. It has not been tested as a program. It has four steps: choose the values, match the stories, plan the talk, and plan what pupils do.
Step 1: choose three or four values
A term of twelve weeks gives each of four values about three weeks. That is room for two or three short stories per value. If your school's mission statement names qualities such as integrity or respect, start there. For a plan that covers the whole year, see building a values-based English curriculum.
Step 2: match stories to each value
A pupil who cannot follow the plot cannot discuss the moral, so the level comes first. See how to match students to the right graded readers. Then check the plot. The value should be shown by what a character does and what follows from it. Following Lee and colleagues (2014), prefer stories in which the value turns out well for the character. Short moral stories to teach honesty, kindness and courage makes the case for one value per story.
Step 3: plan the talk
Write the questions before the lesson. Move from what happened, to a different ending, to the pupils' own world. End by asking each pupil to finish the sentence 'This story shows that ...'. Discussion questions to draw the moral from a story gives the full sequence.
Step 4: plan what pupils do
Keep the action small, shared and free of prizes. The whole class does it, nobody is scored, and it takes a few minutes. The table gives one example for each of six values.
| Value | Story feature to look for | Discussion question | Something pupils do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Honesty | A character owns up to a mistake, and it turns out well | 'What might have happened if she had said nothing?' | Write a short note, real or imagined, that puts a small mistake right |
| Kindness | A character helps someone with no reward in view | 'Who noticed that he needed help? How did they know?' | Each pupil does one helpful job for the class this week, unannounced |
| Courage | A character is afraid and acts anyway | 'What was she afraid of? What helped her?' | Try one thing in English that feels hard, such as reading a line aloud |
| Perseverance | A character fails at least once before succeeding | 'How many times did he try? What changed between tries?' | Set a small reading goal for the week and report back on it |
| Fairness | A character shares or decides something when it costs them | 'Was the ending fair to everyone? Who might disagree?' | Agree a class rule for taking turns in discussion, and use it |
| Responsibility | A character is trusted with a task and sees it through | 'Who was counting on her? What did she do about it?' | Take a class job for a week, such as handing out the readers |
What two weeks on one value can look like
Classroom example (an illustration, not a tested script)
Value: perseverance. Class: 12-year-olds reading at A2.
Week 1, lesson 1: the class reads a short story about a boy who fails a swimming test twice and passes on the third try.
Week 1, lesson 2: plot questions first. Then: 'What changed between his second try and his third?'
Each pupil finishes the sentence 'This story shows that ...'. One possible answer: 'If you practise the hard part, you get better.'
The doing: each pupil sets one small reading goal for the next week, such as finishing a story without stopping.
Week 2: a second story on the same value. Pupils say how they got on with their goal, and compare the two characters.
Nothing in the example is marked for character. The teacher keeps the pupils' sentences, which show what each pupil understood.
What not to do
Some common habits work against the aim. The list below is practice advice. The reviews cited here did not test these points one by one.
- Do not rank children's character. There is no fair measure of one child's honesty against another's. A league table of virtue tells pupils that character is a contest.
- Do not give rewards for 'being kind'. A sticker or a point can make the act about the prize. You also see only a small part of what pupils do, so prizes go to the visible few.
- Do not grade the value. Grade the English if you need a mark. Keep the pupil's sentence about the moral as a record, not a score.
- Do not announce the moral first. A pupil can repeat your sentence without understanding it. Ask before you tell.
How do you know the plan is working?
You cannot measure a pupil's character with a quiz. You can record what the class did. A simple record, kept by class and by term, holds three things:
- The stories read, each with the value it carried.
- The moral each pupil named, in their own words.
- The action the class took for each value.
At the end of term, the record shows which values received real attention and which were crowded out. Some schools answer to a mission statement or an accreditation standard that names character. For them, the record offers stories, discussions and pupils' own sentences to show.
Be modest about what it proves. The record shows teaching, not changed behaviour. None of the studies cited here shows that a story lesson changes how pupils act outside class. Do not promise that to parents or to your board.
Parents can carry the conversation home. How to share values learning with parents sets out what to send and what to leave out.
How iRead handles this
In iRead, stories carry a moral, such as honesty, kindness, courage or perseverance. Stories in global packs are tagged with the values they teach, and a school picks a pack by level, theme and values. Dedicated quiz questions ask what the story taught. Values learned appear next to vocabulary gained in progress views, including the parent's view.
The core principle: Choose the story for the value, plan the talk, and give pupils something to do with it. Record the teaching, never a score for character.
See it in iRead: Stories in global packs are tagged with the values they teach, and a school picks a pack by level, theme and values. Dedicated quiz questions ask what the story taught.
See values through storiesKey takeaway
Reading can carry character education when the story is chosen, discussed and acted on. Plan three or four values a term, and keep what pupils say.
Frequently asked questions
Can teaching character with books replace a character education program?
No study cited here tested that. Berkowitz and Bier (2007) found that effective character education tends to include staff training, direct training of social and emotional skills and service learning, alongside interactive teaching. Reading lessons can supply the stories and the discussion. Treat them as one part of a wider school effort.
What are good character education activities for a reading lesson?
Three fit most stories. Ask what would have happened if the character had chosen differently. Have each pupil finish the sentence 'This story shows that ...'. Then give the class one small action tied to the value, such as a reading goal for perseverance. Keep all three free of marks and prizes.
Does character education work with teenagers?
Jeynes (2019) found that character education had somewhat greater effects for pupils in high school than for those in elementary school. That finding covers character education in general, not reading lessons. In class, give teenagers a real choice to argue about, and avoid presenting the moral as settled.
Should values appear on report cards?
Not as a grade. You can report which stories the class read, which values they raised and what the pupil said the moral was. That is a record of teaching and of the pupil's own words. A mark for kindness or honesty would be a guess.
Sources
- Berkowitz, M. W., & Bier, M. C. (2007). What works in character education. Journal of Research in Character Education, 5(1), 29-48. doi.org/10.1108/CE-02-2007-0002
- Jeynes, W. H. (2019). A meta-analysis on the relationship between character education and student achievement and behavioral outcomes. Education and Urban Society, 51(1), 33-71. doi.org/10.1177/0013124517747681
- Narvaez, D., Gleason, T., Mitchell, C., & Bentley, J. (1999). Moral theme comprehension in children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91(3), 477-487. doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.91.3.477
- Narvaez, D. (2002). Does reading moral stories build character?. Educational Psychology Review, 14(2), 155-171. doi.org/10.1023/A:1014674621501
- Lee, K., Talwar, V., McCarthy, A., Ross, I., Evans, A., & Arruda, C. (2014). Can classic moral stories promote honesty in children?. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1630-1636. doi.org/10.1177/0956797614536401