On The Importance of Coherence in the Study of Character Development Free

As described by Lerner, Callina, Nucci, and others (Callina, Ryan, et al., 2017; Lerner & Callina, 2014; Nucci, this issue), character development may be usefully understood within the frame of relational development systems (RDS) metatheory. RDS represents a set of concepts about human development which emphasize that developmental outcomes—an individual’s character attributes, for example—depend on the ongoing coactions between the individual and his or her context (Overton, 2015). Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems model (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) is a well-known example of a model framed by RDS metatheory (e.g., see Lerner, 2017, and Lerner, Vandell, & Tirrell, this issue, for a discussion of this link). The contexts included in the bioecological model contain many levels of the ecology: the natural or built environment; relationships with other people, including caregivers, teachers, neighbors, et cetera.; societal influences and institutions; and culture. The essential feature of Bronfenbrenner’s model (often represented by concentric circles, with the person at the center and the “macro” developmental influences at the outside; Bronfenbrenner, 1979) is the bidirectional arrows that mark the mutually influential relations within and across all levels of organization within the ecology.

As described by Overton (2015), RDS metatheory is derived from a process-relational paradigm, as compared to a Cartesian worldview (e.g., involving mind/body dualism and other split conceptions) that has framed ontology for much of human history. The process-relational paradigm focuses on process (systematic changes in the developmental system), holism (the meanings of entities and events derive from the context in which they are embedded), relational analysis (assessment of the mutually influential relations within the developmental system), and the use of multiple perspectives and explanatory forms (employment of ideas from multiple theory-based models of change within and of the developmental system). Within the process-relational paradigm, the organism is seen as inherently active, self-creating (autopoietic), self-organizing, self-regulating (agentic), nonlinear and complex, and adaptive (Overton, 2015). As such, researchers who subscribe to RDS metatheory use models of development that emphasize the integration of different levels of organization, ranging from biology and physiology to culture and history (e.g., Gottlieb, 1998, 2004; Mascolo & Fischer, 2015; Mistry & Dutta, 2015). Thus, the conceptual emphasis in RDS theories is placed on mutually influential relations between individuals and contexts, represented as individual ⇔ context relations.

The bidirectional arrow used in the RDS representation of person ⇔ context relations is intended to emphasize that the coaction of individual and context involves the entire developmental system. As such, the relations among levels of the autopoietic system, and not independent linear combinatorial attributes, are the focus in such a model. Indeed, the fusion of individual and context within the developmental system means that any portion of the system is inextricably embedded with—or embodied by, in Overton’s (2015) terms—all other portions of the developmental system. Embodiment refers to the way individuals behave, experience, and live in the world by their being active agents with particular kinds of bodies; the body is integratively understood as form (a biological referent), as lived experience (a psychological referent), and as an entity in active engagement with the world (a sociocultural and historical referent; Overton, 2015).

The embeddedness within history (temporality) is of fundamental significance in RDS theories (Elder, Shanahan, & Jennings, 2015). Embeddedness means that change is constant in the developmental system. There may be either random or systematic changes in person ⇔ context relations across time and place (Elder et al., 2015). Bronfenbrenner referred to temporality as the chronosystem in his process-person ⇔ context-time model of individual ⇔ context relations (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The presence of such temporality in the developmental system means that there always exists some potential for systematic change, for plasticity, in the relational developmental system.

This point is a crucial component of RDS thinking; it is the component of RDS that gives it power to influence practice and policy across any domain of human flourishing. There always exists the potential for (relative) plasticity in human development (Gottlieb, 1998, 2004; Lerner, 2010). Adjustments to any level of the ecology, from improvements in nutrition to more equitable social policies, may alter the course of an individual’s embodied person ⇔ context relations. Accordingly, individual developmental trajectories are marked by plasticity.

Developmental trajectories are plastic and diverse, but not infinitely so; constraints imposed by the context channel pathways of goal selection and attainment (Nurmi, 2004). Developmental pathways are not completely random, either; the individual has agency to guide his or her relations with the context. When individual ⇔ context relations are mutually beneficial—that is, when both individual and context engage in positive or healthy exchanges—these relations are termed adaptive developmental relations (Brandtstädter, 1998). In order for the person to maintain such adaptive developmental regulations with the context, the individual must enact specific behaviors at specific times in life and in specific settings. In other words, the individual must be flexible and adaptive in order to maintain positive individual ⇔ context relations in the complex and changing ecology of human development. Thus, we argue that adaptive development is marked by coherence of the underlying structures that promote mutually beneficial person ⇔ context relations, and not by consistency of functioning. We elaborate on these ideas and their importance for studying character development below.

In an RDS-based approach to understanding development, neither an individual’s attributes nor the context alone can explain how development proceeds in any particular instance; the individual and the context are entirely integrated. Therefore, any explanation of development must involve understanding the person, the context, and how they relate to one another across time and place (Elder et al., 2015). RDS theories are therefore useful for understanding any developmental phenomena, including moral character and character virtue development.

Lerner and Callina (2014) presented an RDS approach to studying character development (see too Callina, Ryan et al., 2017; Nucci, this issue). According to this approach, character develops through “a specific set of mutually beneficial relations that vary across time and ... place, between person and context ... and, in particular, between the individual and other individuals that comprise his or her context” (Lerner & Callina, 2014, p. 323). In other words, character constitutes attributes of an individual’s relations with his or her social context that involve coherently “doing the right thing” (morally and behaviorally) to provide mutually positive benefits to both self and others. As we will suggest in greater detail in this article, coherence of the character system—and not consistency across time and place—is the hallmark of character virtue development (Lerner & Callina, 2014; Nucci, this issue).

The importance for human flourishing of mutually beneficial relations between an individual and his or her community context is widely accepted among scholars who study character development and education. For example, Nucci (2001) emphasized that character virtue development involves “human welfare, justice and rights, which are a function of inherent features of interpersonal relations” (p. 7), and Berkowitz (2012) described character as “a public system of universal concerns about human welfare, justice, and rights that all rational people would want others to adhere to” (p. 249). Narvaez (2008), highlighting the contextual, adaptive nature of character, explained that a person with character lives a life that is good for one to live within one’s community.

In short, from an RDS-based perspective, character involves a person’s positive and adaptive actions-in-context. Thus, to understand character development, researchers, practitioners, and educators must seek to understand the underlying structure of character that allows a person to direct the course of adaptive regulations with the environment. Nucci (this issue) proposes that this structure is comprised of several components: moral cognition, moral agency, and moral enactment or performance. A fourth component of character, which Nucci describes as an orientation to principled moral change, involves acting positively on the social world (one’s family, school, or community, for instance) to promote thriving within the developmental system (Lerner, 2017).

Taken together, these four components can be used to identify individuals with “good character.” Researchers often turn to assessments of character virtues, such as honesty, humility, empathy, or hope to describe good character and to evaluate character promotion programs. Nucci (this issue) is somewhat critical of this approach, insofar as virtue research attempts to identify a universal, acontextual set of character attributes that all people should have or ignores the central role of morality in the character system. We agree with Nucci’s critiques of virtue research, but would nevertheless suggest that character virtues play a supporting role in moral cognitions (associated character virtues include intellectual humility, curiosity, etc.), moral agency (e.g., empathy and other socioemotional skills), the enactment of moral character (e.g., self-regulation and executive functioning), and moral change (e.g., leadership, generosity, etc.). Moreover, character virtues can be taught, assessed, and used to guide curriculum development. Recall that an RDS approach to character virtue development prioritizes mutually beneficial person ⇔ context (and person ⇔ person) relations (Lerner & Callina, 2014). We see the individual’s contribution to these relations as necessarily moral, that is, as promoting the welfare and rights of others within a community. Accordingly, from an RDS perspective character virtues support the moral core that is the essential feature of Nucci’s (this issue) character system.

If, as we contend, research on character development within an RDS perspective should seek to understand coherence of functioning (i.e., doing what is needed to promote mutual benefits for person and context), rather than consistency (i.e., doing the same things no matter what is needed at a specific time and place), a focus on how character virtues support moral contributions of the individual to his or her community will be important. Character virtue research will be most useful when researchers and practitioners are sensitive to the changing nature of person ⇔ context relations across time and place; good character for a 14-year-old high school student dealing with cyber bullying in his school will look different than what one would expect from a 28-year-old military officer seeking to promote discipline and cohesion within her unit.

Nucci (this issue) defines coherence as it relates to character development as “the rational connection among contextualized moral judgments and actions as seen from the vantage point of the actor rather than the similarity in actions within a given type of situation as seen from the point of view of an observer” (p. 15). From this conception of coherence, the construct is part of the phenomenology of the actor (e.g., see Spencer, Swanson, & Harpalani, 2015). We would add that character development researchers and character educators can also appraise (observe) coherence, as compared to consistency. Indeed, within an RDS model, we may hypothesize that adaptive relations between actors and observers would involve congruence between them in judgments about whether manifestations of character reflect coherence across time and place.

Accordingly, our expansion of Nucci’s (this issue) definition proposes that coherence may be understood in at least three interrelated ways. First, coherence may be thought of as a system of integrated moral concepts. Different facets of moral functioning must be in a person’s repertoire in order for him or her to act coherently as compared to consistently. Second, borrowing from Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1985), developmental scientists may look for coherence of the moral core in the application of a specific character virtue to maintain the adaptive functioning of a specific individual in a specific context (Bornstein, 2017). Third, as Nucci (this issue) and others (Smetana, Jambon, & Ball, 2014) have argued, morality is not the primary motivation for all behavior, and so coherence may be thought of as the appropriate application of morality to a particular situation. It is useful to discuss these three ideas in more detail.

Coherence may refer to the extent to which the components of the character system are integrated or synchronized (Nucci, this issue; Turiel, 2015): these structures are moral cognitions, agency, enactment, and change. Researchers and practitioners should search for evidence of positive character not in the consistent application of virtues across domains and over time, but rather in the adaptive development of the four character components outlined by Nucci: moral cognition, moral mental health, moral enactment, and an orientation to principled moral change.

Throughout the course of human development, developmental scientists should not impose an unreasonable expectation of consistency in moral behaviors, or attribute lack of consistency to moral failing. There are two reasons for this view. First, as Turiel (2015) notes, “alternative acts seemingly different from each other ... can be motivated by similar moral concepts” (p. 504). Second, developmental scientists have to allow for mistakes in the course of “the normative and expected adjustments to the social context by a functioning moral agent” (Nucci, this issue, p. 12). RDS concepts justify a hopeful orientation to human development; owing to the potential for plasticity, every individual can be placed on a pathway marked by positive character development. We subscribe to a positive development approach to promoting character, which suggests that every individual has strengths that can be leveraged (by practitioners, educators, parents, mentors, etc.) to enhance character virtue development (Callina, Mueller, Napolitano, Lerner, & Lerner, 2016).

Different virtues may be expressed in different amounts, in different contexts, at different times, which points to Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1985). Phronesis, also referred to as “practical wisdom,” allows an individual to find the right balance of a given virtue, so as to avoid vice on the one hand or zealotry on the other. Applying this concept to modern theories of positive, adaptive psychosocial functioning, Seligman (2015) argues that psychological health relies on the presence of strengths (virtues) and is threatened by “the absence, the excess, or the opposite of strengths” (p. 4). Questions about coherence versus consistency of character with respect to variation in context may be especially useful for understanding the developmental course of character among diverse individuals (Lerner & Callina, 2014).

For instance, are particular indicators of character, such as generosity, manifested consistently across time and place? Research suggests that they are not (Nucci & Turiel, 2009). Alternatively, does the idea of coherence (as contrasted with consistency) mark a person’s character across time and place? We believe that affirmative answers to this question suggest a promising area of inquiry for the burgeoning science of character virtue development. Rather than a concern about merely increasing scores on a measure of character, such as grit, researchers and practitioners should seek to understand whether a person applies task “stick-to-itiveness” in some circumstances, but employs ingenuity—and thus the generation of potentially different actions—in the face of an intractable problem.

The focus on coherence for future research in character development presents challenges for scholars. Much of the prior research on character has focused on assessing individual and group differences in the levels of a particular character virtue and on increasing it (Lerner & Callina, 2014; Nucci, this issue). Not surprisingly, Nucci (this issue) envisions a comprehensive assessment of character that attends to each of the four character components. These assessments must, in turn, be contextualized. A holistic approach to studying character would therefore involve the use of multiple methods (e.g., qualitative and quantitative), multiple informants and/or observational data, and longitudinal data to model change. One example of character virtue development research framed by RDS metatheory is the ongoing study of character and leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, called Project Arete (Callina, Ryan et al., 2017; Matthews, 2016). We hope that the findings from Project Arete and other studies will demonstrate the utility of applying the concept of coherence to understanding character development in specific contexts, especially educational and out-of-school time activities (see Callina et al., 2016, for more examples of RDS-based character virtue development research).

Advances in methodological and data analytic tools will also be required to understand coherence in character development. Researchers should attempt to design studies that are person-centered, rather than based on group averages (Rose, 206). RDS meta-theory emphasizes the nonergodicity of human development (e.g., Mascolo & Fischer, 2015; Molenaar & Nesselroade, 2015; Raeff, 2016). Nonergodicity refers to statistical methods that provide information about individuals’ dynamic and diverse developmental trajectories (Molenaar & Nesselroade, 2015; Rose, 2016). In other words, character development research—including character education program evaluation—should strive to model pathways of development, development across different contexts, and the within- and between-person diversity in the ways in which character attributes are expressed (e.g., Molenaar & Nesselroade, 2015; Rose, 2016). In addition to the technological advances that Nucci (this issue) proposes to analyze large amounts of qualitative data (e.g., automated text coding), we believe that methodological innovations such as integrative data analysis (Curran & Hussong, 2009; Callina, Johnson et al., 2017) may promote the large-scale data analysis procedures necessary to use to understand coherence.

Taken together, our recommendations for the future study of character development will require the kind of collaborative science that is more commonly seen in biology, chemistry, and physics: networks of researchers seeking to integrate multiple sources of data and working to translate findings from the lab to the classroom. Such advances in scholarship would serve not only the science of character virtues development. The attendees of the July, 2016 National Academy of Sciences meeting, from which this article and the special issue within which it appears were derived, included researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and educators from both out-of-school-time and school-based programs. We believe that our vision for the future of character virtue development research will promote understanding across these stakeholder groups of the diverse ways in which individuals coherently engage in mutually beneficial relations with their context.

We believe that developmental models of character must focus on coherence of character across time and place. Indeed, as Nucci (this issue) emphasizes, attempts to impose an impossible level of consistency on the conceptualization or operationalization of character mistakenly assume a decontextualized psychological system that has little to do with an actual human being. However, if there is no average individual (Rose, 2016), and if positive and adaptive character development varies across time and place, how do educators provide the experiences essential to develop each person in their charge into an individual of good character?

We believe that a new approach to evidence-based practice in character education is needed. This approach might be usefully framed by the specificity principle (Bornstein, 2017) that indicates the multiple dimensions of individual and context that must be integrated in research to enable character educators to educate youth with the capacity of manifest coherence. For instance, such integration may elucidate what specific character virtues, for individuals of what specific ages and other specific demographic attributes, developing in what specific settings, and having what specific experiences (e.g., participating, or not, in specific youth-development and/or character education programs), and linked to what other specific individual and ecological variables, result in what specific developmental trajectories of both character virtues development and other theoretically specified features of human development (e.g., active and positive civic engagement; Lerner, 2017) across what specific portions of the life course.

Addressing these questions of coherence in character requires coherence among character researchers. We believe that such coherence in scholarship is possible, if the above-noted innovations in conceptualization of character development, developmental methodology, and collaborative science mark the future of RDS-based studies of character. Empowered with answers to the set of questions involved in framing research through the specificity principle, practitioners, educators, and policymakers may then be able to design and enact the nuanced programs that will embrace the diversity of each individual and set him or her on a thriving trajectory marked by the development of positive character.

The preparation of this article was supported in part by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust. Author’s contact information: Kristina Callina, Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development, Tufts University, 26 Winthrop Street, Medford, MA 02155. Email: kristina.callina@tufts.edu.