A Research On Practical Progress Of American New Character Education Since The 1900s

How to develop a man of good character for the new era of globalization,information and social change has become one of the important education issues in the world.Since the 1990s,China has been in a period of social transition,the traditional social values and modes of moral education are coming under attack.How to seek the new value direction and effective ways and methods of moral education has become the hot educational topic of this new era.Since the 1980s,the United States has launched the new character education movement and its policies,ideas and methods have gradually caused Chinese scholars attention.However,we still need to get a closer examination of the implementation of its curriculums,programs and present practice in recent 30 years.So I took the opportunity of studying in the United States to explore the development of American new character education in the recent 30 years.I studied a numberr of related literature and papers,and I also investigated one kindergarten and some public schools in the United States.This thesis consists of five parts.The first part is an introduction,it mainly introduces the research background,research significance,research questions,definitions of character education and some terms related to it,research methods,and the existing research of American character education.The introduction part has expressed the origin and purpose of this study.The first chapter reviews the development of the new character education in recent three decades.It is mainly about the historic features of American new character education,the attention and policy support of federal government,the support from the whole society,the criticism of the dominant character education theories of that time,as well as construction of new character education theories by the experts or scholars who support American new character education.This chapter depicts the development,policy,social and ideological basis of American new character education in past thirty years in order to show the macro background of new character education which is necessary for the following two chapters.The second chapter is the main part of the paper which mainly analyzes curriculums and programs of American new character education.Some influential courses such as IM4U,Character Counts and the Giraffe Project are from pre-school stage to high school stage.As for programs,I mainly introduce "Teaching Students to be Peacemakers"(TSP)and "Caring School Community",which are not only feasible,but also effective in practical level.TSP has been applied to resolve peer conflicts and CSC is about campus bullying.Thesis mainly states the basic claims,practice strategies,the current implementation,'influence and popularized status of these curriculum and programs.The third chapter is the practical investigation of a kindergarten and an elementary school in the United States which is also one of the main chapters of this thesis.I record the peer conflict and bullying in the context of schooling.So the aim of this part is to analyze the teachers' education strategies,their education belief,and the education policies which have impacted on their education behaviors' and so on.This chapter tries to elicit the current progress of American new character education more clearly from practical level.The fourth chapter is about the challenges which American new character education faces during the process of development.The rationality,the practice efficiency and the deficiencies of the new character education are analyzed in this chapter.In general,this thesis argues that the practice of American new character education in recent three decades is positive,which has already accumulated a lot of significant curriculum,programs as well as the education methods.All these achievements are closely related to high attention of the U.S.governments,society,as well as academic theories.However,we must have an objective view of the deficiencies of new American character education.For example,insufficient teacher training,lack of corresponding evaluation mechanism,moral indoctrination without concrete contexts are all very common.At the same time,the academic circles in the United States overemphasize the personal and schools' responsibilities,but it ignores the influence of society and the federal government.