ABSTRACT
The author provides a case study of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, which seeks to provide a real-life example of the practical steps one can take to engage with practitioners and policy makers in the field of education. In 1988, after completing seven years teaching in a large Birmingham comprehensive school the author began a Master of Science degree in educational governance at the University of Oxford. The author's early book on communitarian education argued that many of the assumptions of communitarianism are rooted in an Aristotelian virtue ethics approach to education. Well-qualified staff are vital for any research project, and from the beginning the Jubilee Centre was concerned with being an interdisciplinary endeavour, and therefore required expertise across a range of academic disciplines. The initial motivation for creating the Centre was to promote, through rigorous research, the importance of character in British society.
