As the editors of the Journal of Character Education, we are pleased to introduce the first issue of the journal’s 14th volume. Nearly at the midpoint of its second decade, we wish to give credit and thanks to both our wonderful Managing Editor, Dr. Jonathan Tirrell, and a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation that has provided complementary subscriptions to emerging scholars. We are always on the lookout for new subscribers and new manuscripts. You, our readers, are the best source of help with both.
In this issue, we have continued to focus both on peer-reviewed scholarly work and on editor-reviewed practitioner-focused manuscripts. In the latter category (“Voices”), we continue a recent tradition of publishing the comments by the most recent recipient of Character.org’s “Sandy Award” (the Sanford N. McDonnell Lifetime Achievement Award in Character Education). In 2017 this prestigious award was given to longtime character.org leader Charles Haynes. We include here the introductory remarks of former Character.org Executive Director Linda McKay and the acceptance speech delivered at that ceremony by Dr. Haynes.
We often get requests from those who have created character education programs and/or curricula to publish evidence of their effectiveness; however, they rarely have a single study which meets the methodological criteria for scholarly publication. So we have tried a new strategy here for the first time. Joseph Hoedel and Robert Lee’s article is a report that follows more the criterion of “a preponderance of evidence” (based on a series of studies over 15 years) than a single “gold standard” (e.g., randomized control design) single study. We will be interested in how readers react to this strategy, and we welcome your comments.
These papers are accompanied by three more excellent scholarly papers. Andrea Ettekal and colleagues present a study of the perspectives of high school athletic directors on character education. Sarah Hamsher reflects on the application of positive causal attribution training to character education. Toni Mandelbaum reports empirical data on the relation between attachment and grit in adolescence. In addition, Thomas Lickona’s new book about parenting for character is reviewed by David Streight.
Thank you for your subscribership to the only journal devoted exclusively to character education and character education research.
