Character education program: Impact and outcome on student behavior in a California middle school

With discipline problems on the rise in educational institutions, there is a need to develop a school-wide plan to alleviate disciplinary issues. Many teachers feel the pressure of policing students on their daily behavior instead of being able to focus on developing academic achievement.;The goal of this project was to develop and implement a character education program designed to specifically teach the students about all aspects of character and human values. This would be done by teachers who taught character education lessons along with other academic skills, in the hope that it would eventually lead to a decrease in disciplinary referrals.;This applied research project was conducted with students in grades six through eight for two years. A character education program was developed and reviewed by this researcher for two years and implemented by the homeroom teachers after the conclusion of the daily morning announcements.;During the two years of implementation of the character education program, archival data was gathered which was related to the following three student disciplinary behavior infractions: (1) causing or attempting to cause physical injury, (2) disruption of school activities, and (3) classroom performance. During the first year of implementation, referrals for causing or attempting to cause physical injury decreased by 183 student disciplinary referrals or a reduction of 80% and 59% during the second year. Referrals for disruption of school activities decreased by 162 student disciplinary referrals or a reduction of 17% during the first school year and by 384 student disciplinary referrals or a reduction of 94% during the second year. Referrals for classroom performance decreased by 20 student disciplinary referrals or a reduction of 32% the first year, however, there was an increase of 52% in these referrals during the second year.;This researcher invested two years developing and overseeing the implementation of character program lessons that were taught daily in the morning advisory periods. During the first year of implementation, there was a sharp decline in student disciplinary referrals. In addition, student disciplinary referrals continued to remain low during the second year of the program's implementation.