Below you’ll find the sixth essay I wrote for my MA in Character Education (2022-25). I struggled with this one.
I had an idea that I wanted to explore – something I’d touched on in a previous assignment. I wanted to investigate the effect that rewards have on onlookers (i.e., non-recipients), an important issue given the group dynamics of the classroom. However, the essay had to satisfy three other criteria. First, I had to identify a character-based dilemma in my professional context. Then, I had to reflect on this dilemma using a chosen model of reflection and justify that choice. Finally, I had to propose a professional development activity to help prepare teachers to address the dilemma. A lot to do in one essay! And there were other complications…
To begin with, I wasn’t happy with the received definition of “character-based dilemma”. I found it theoretically muddled – mixing Aristotle with Kant. So I proposed a new, faithfully Aristotelian definition:
A situation in which one must choose between two courses of action that equally stall or reverse the internalisation of virtue – where a virtue is “internalised” as its motivation shifts from extrinsic to intrinsic (see Key concepts).
For example, if a child is kind initially on the promise of rewards, but in time comes to value kindness for its own sake, this shift in motivation – from extrinsic to intrinsic – would comprise an internalisation of virtue. If a practitioner were confronted with a choice between two courses of action that equally disrupted this process – in two different children, say – then this would constitute a character-based dilemma.
Then, I returned to the Jubilee Centre’s neo-Aristotelian model of moral development, which outlines two pathways to virtue: an upper trajectory driven by intrinsic motivation, and a lower trajectory that relies more on extrinsic motivation. The latter presumes that some children can be lured into developing virtuous habits through rewards. But what effect might this strategy have on children already on the upper-trajectory? Evidence suggests that it may undermine their motivation due to perceptions of unfairness.
I illustrated this problem using an example from my own teaching practice. A tutor team introduced a reward programme aimed at students who struggled to behave. Other students – those who behaved consistently well – complained that this was unfair, and their motivation appeared to decline as a result.
Teachers thus face a dilemma in which one child’s moral development may come at the expense of another’s. Some students seem to need rewards to get going, but using rewards may discourage more autonomous students. This, by my definition, is a character-based dilemma – one seemingly baked into the very structure of the Jubilee Centre’s model.
Once I’d formulated this issue as a dilemma, I moved to the next requirement: choosing a model of reflection. The problem was, none of the options quite allowed me to reflect in the way I wanted. So I developed a hybrid model: a structure based on Dewey’s (1933) model of reflective thinking, combined with Brookfield’s (2017) four “critical lenses” for reflective teaching – students’ eyes, colleagues’ perceptions, theory, and personal experience.
Through this hybrid model, I arrived at a hypothesis. If students are losing motivation because they perceive an injustice, then maybe the solution is to address their conception of justice. After all, according to Aristotelian character education, justice is a virtue, and virtues are educable.
The problematic conception of justice here is the idea that everyone should be treated exactly the same. “Why should he be rewarded for showing up on time once, when I’m on time every day with no reward? How is that fair?” Though common among children and teenagers, this is a naive view of justice. A more sophisticated view holds that fairness sometimes requires treating people differently based on their needs.
To encourage this shift, I would ask students to pretend they were responsible for dividing some food between two people: a starving person and someone with unlimited access to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Should the food be split equally? Most saw that it shouldn’t.
I realised that these conversations were examples of Socratic dialogue. The philosopher Socrates was famous for driving his interlocutors into self-contradiction, freeing them of their false preconceptions. This was precisely what I was attempting with my students in relation to their assumptions about justice. So, in the final part of the essay, I proposed a professional development activity designed to familiarise pre-service teachers with the principles of Socratic dialogue, equipping them to engage in similar reflective conversations in their own classrooms.
That, in a nutshell, was the essay. Initially, I found the multiple assignment constraints frustrating. But in the end, I learned a great deal from trying to work within them. If there’s a takeaway, it’s this: for character education to succeed fairly, teachers must be attuned to their students’ ideas about justice – and be prepared to challenge those ideas when needed.
This essay later became the basis of a talk I gave at a conference – my first conference talk, in fact.