Experts looking at students ‘ ‘ character, meaning, and associations’ to know how they thrive
As Harvard University researchers plan to digitally review and track well-being and achievement beyond traditional metrics, a project focused on learners ‘ character will soon be a hit at some colleges.
The study is a part of Wake Forest University’s larger Educating Character Initiative, which promotes character development and values in education. This time, the organization awarded$ 15.6 million in provides for 24 initiatives at 29 institutions, including the one at Harvard, The College Fix reported.
Harvard scholars Tyler VanderWeele ( pictured right ) and Brendan Case ( pictured left ) will use their grant, awarded in early August, for a” Virtues of Academic Flourishing Initiative” aimed at better understanding students ‘ well-being and the values they take from their college experience.
In a new phone interview with The College Fix, Case stated,” The main goal of the program is to get a better sense of the distribution of the distribution across American institutions of a sophisticated personality that we’re calling educational flourishing, which is basically the amount that the lives of students are going well.”
VanderWeele is Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program chairman, and Case is the associate director of research. VanderWeele also serves as a teacher and co-director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion.
” Academic flourishing as we hope to examine it involves features of student life from personal blooming like mental and physical health, personality, meaning and associations, but also social well-being for the school as a whole”, Case told The Fix.
” How well does the school work? Does it have powerful leadership and practices? Is it a place that’s moving all along towards a common target, or is it very contentious”? he said.
Event stated in an email that the researchers intend to conduct research at various institutions as part of their study, even though Harvard is not one of them. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s second study is scheduled to start this month and will last three decades, ending in August 2027, he said.
” We do believe that the more institutions engage in this kind of judgment, the more valuable, openly, they’ll observe it”, he said.
Their study addresses a significant gap in current institutions, which frequently prioritize wellness, inclusion, and work outcomes metrics over character traits necessary for educational and career success, according to Case.
Neglecting to develop qualities like credibility, trust, and love of learning has hindered institutions from fully realizing the guarantees of their main missions, he said.
” Universities measure a lot of important aspects of student life,” Case told The Fix. As far as we can tell, they are not doing as much to determine how much a student’s time at a college or university is transforming them into the people that universities claim they will produce.
MORE: Wake Forest program helps students build’ moral, civic’ character
Case argued that institutions must continue to make students ‘ investments in higher education worth the cost in the face of numerous trends that are threatening higher education.
He said,” This would make a significant addition to the list of assessments that a university is currently conducting,” adding that.
These new character metrics “would give them a better sense of how well they’re doing at achieving what they say are their core aims are: forming students who can, in the first instance, preserve, cultivate, and transmit knowledge across the generations, and then secondarily, those who can serve as as leaders”, he said.
Still early in the project, Case said collecting data is the current focus. Eventually, to build off their results, he said he hopes to gain resources that will even more directly promote character education.
” I anticipate that the work we do over the next few years will lead to a lot of other work,” he said to The Fix. We anticipate that because this project crosses the line between research and direct promotion of flourishing, which in our opinion is the first, most significant step in the direction of changing ]higher education,”” we expect that it will be an increasing research priority.”
Their project is a component of a larger Educating Character Initiative, which is funded by the Lilly Endowment and is led by Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Its objective is to give public and private higher education institutions, secular and religious, the tools to “integrate character education” into their classes and campus cultures.
At Hope College, a private Christian institution in Michigan, another project is being pursued as part of the initiative. College leaders are incorporating the virtues of gratitude and generosity into their courses and research projects, according to The Fix.
MORE: Act of forgiveness decreases anxiety and depression in all humans: scholars
IMAGE: Harvard University Human Flourishing Program
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