ABSTRACT

Ever since Edward Thorndike popularized the application of the methods of behavioral research to educational settings at the beginning of the twentieth century, American education has been committed to the belief that ndings from educational research can lead to improvements in educational practice by telling us “what works” and “what doesn’t work.” Over the past 100 years character education and educational research have been fellow travelers. At the turn of the twentieth century an emerging character education movement relied largely on philosophical and phenomenological perspectives to de ne its goals and pedagogy. The initial methods advocated by the leaders of this movement relied largely on exhortation, habit formation, and the use in textbooks of inspiring gures from literature and history. These largely teacher-centered methods were referred to as direct instruction. Even though the research of this era was widely interpreted as discrediting teacher-centered and directive methods in character education, these methods never lost their appeal to educators of the era.