Character Education in Early Childhood: A Preschool Curriculum Guide

A silent carpet session is easy to mistake for moral progress. It rarely is. Character education in early childhood is the planned teaching of moral and performance virtues, honesty, kindness, perseverance and self-regulation among them, to children aged three to seven, so that they act well and can say why. Young children learn these virtues by watching the adults around them and copying what earns approval, which is why modelling carries more weight than any display board (Bandura, 1977).

In a Year 1 lesson on sharing pencils, a teacher narrates her own choice aloud: I want the red one, so I am going to ask instead of grabbing. The children rehearse the same move in pairs, and she names the virtue afterwards. Model, rehearse, name. That sequence is the working core of character development in the early years, and it comes before reasoning, since four-year-olds imitate long before they can justify (Piaget, 1952).

Foundations of Character Education

"The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." - Martin Luther King, Jr. (King, 1947)

Martin Luther King, Jr's point belongs in a Reception classroom as much as in public life, where character education transcends placing emphasis on academic knowledge. The world at large may have made strides when it comes to technology and other advancements of this century. However, when reading media posts or watching television there is clear evidence that in some schools there is an erosion of basic values and character traits that were essential for our forefathers.

Turning back time and reflecting on conversations that I had with my grandparents, many of the social ills that are predominant today were on a very small scale from their perspective. According to them it could be attributed to the change in family structures and the rapid pace at which the world is evolving.

Reviews of character education and social-emotional learning show promise. The gains come when schools design and run these programmes well. But we should not boil the evidence down to percentage claims with no source.

Durlak et al. (2011) found an 11 percentile-point gain in academic achievement across universal SEL programmes. Berkowitz and Bier (2004) reviewed the wider character-education research and warned about how hard these programmes are to run well.

Lickona (1997) argued that the moral character of the nation had slipped. He pointed to violence among teenagers and weak language skills. He also named substance abuse, a poor work ethic and disrespect. Devianti, Sari, & Bangsawan (2020, cited in Fitri & Sati, 2023:700) suggest character education can make quality of life better.

Suroso and Husin (2024) say character education starts at home. Parents and carers plant the first values in a child's early years.

Stories about good choices help build respect, responsibility and honesty. Owning your mistakes, being kind and being straight with people matter just as much.

Suroso and Husin (2024:45) say a learner's inherent qualities shape character. The learner's worldview also matters, with their knowledge and experiences. Moral principles, guidance and parent interactions are also key factors.

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Thomas Lickona and the Character Education Movement

Lickona shapes how schools think about character education. Suroso and Husin (2024:40) note that his work has made schools more aware of moral development.

His framework guides teachers through three steps: knowing what is good, wanting it, and then doing it. That structure shapes how character education is taught.

Character starts at home. Parents and carers are the first people a child copies, and the first heroes a child looks up to. What parents do each day teaches a child right from wrong, over and over, as they grow up. Suroso & Husin (2024:45) make a fair point about role models here.

Bandura's Social Learning Theory (SLT) says parents pass on more than behaviour. They also pass on attitudes and beliefs (Yousefi, 2023:21). So children need plenty of chances to build good habits and practise being good people. In short, they need to help others, tell the truth, be polite and act fairly, again and again (Suroso & Husin, 2024:43).

These habits are the building blocks of character. The work carries on at school, where parents and teachers become partners in the learner's education.

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Key Character Virtues and Moral Development

At the heart of character education lies the cultivation of specific virtues that shape how young people think, feel, and act. Organisations such as the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham have identified a framework of character virtues that schools can embed across the curriculum. These character strengths are typically grouped into four categories:

• Moral virtues: Compassion, honesty, courage, gratitude, justice, humility, and respect. These guide ethical behaviour and help children distinguish right from wrong.
• Intellectual virtues: Curiosity, critical thinking, practical wisdom, open-mindedness, and resourcefulness. These support deeper learning and sound judgement.
• Civic virtues: Citizenship, community awareness, service, and social justice. These prepare learners for responsible participation in society.
• Performance virtues: Resilience, determination, confidence, and teamwork. These enable learners to put their moral and intellectual virtues into practice.

For the UK picture, start with the Jubilee Centre's University of Birmingham research report on character education in UK schools. It is a far stronger source than survey snippets with nothing behind them.

Park and Peterson (2006) also link character strengths in young children with happiness. The DfE character education framework then gives English schools practical questions for reviewing what they offer.

Practical wisdom helps learners choose character strengths, say researchers. Learners use it to weigh values like honesty and compassion. This lets them make considered choices. Moral reasoning grows, important for development (Kohlberg, Piaget).

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Integrity and Honesty

Integrity and honesty sit at the centre of character education in the early years. Integrity involves doing the right thing even when no one is watching, a principle that teachers and school leaders can reinforce through consistent expectations and by modelling transparent behaviour. When children learn that honesty is valued not for the sake of avoiding punishment but because it reflects who they are, character education moves beyond compliance and into genuine moral character formation. Schools that create a culture of trust find that learners become more willing to take academic risks, admit mistakes, and support one another.

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Cultivating Compassion

Kindness and empathy build strong bonds. Character education helps learners see how other people think and feel. They learn to be kind and to help.

This links to emotional intelligence, which means noticing and handling your own feelings. Research shows that a social and emotional focus improves behaviour, friendships and wellbeing.

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Character Education and British Values

DfE guidance on promoting fundamental British values through SMSC asks maintained schools to promote five things. These are democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect, and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.

Character education supports that work directly. Learners get to practise fairness, respectful disagreement and civic responsibility.

British values and character education work well together. British values are the core principles of life in modern Britain. Character education gives learners virtues such as respect and courage.

Carr and Harrison (2015) build on Aristotle. They say that character traits help learners act morally.

Schools should build character education into their ethos. SEL, kind behaviour towards others and shared values all feed into character. A whole-school approach lets British values grow on their own, and it ties wellbeing to social responsibility.

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Ethical Leaders of Tomorrow: The Role of Character Education in Schools

Yael Kidron's 2017 Markkula centre article on teaching character sets out what character education is. It is a planned effort to build the skills, attitudes, motives and beliefs behind helpful, moral behaviour. That attribution is safer than the misdated one used before.

Integrated values can support caring school communities when they are made visible in routines, relationships and curriculum examples. The claim should be treated as a practical school-culture point, not as evidence from a single commercial blog post.

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Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Learners need critical thinking skills to make moral choices. They have to weigh up a problem and think about what will follow (Berkowitz, 2011). Choices like these get them ready for adult life and work. Character education also builds responsible citizens who understand other people (Lickona, 1991; Narvaez, 2006).

Kidron's Santa Clara University material says character education spans many subjects. It touches health, relationships, community life and moral choices.

With younger learners, teachers can name kind acts and use stories, art, music, games and role-play. Older learners can link virtues to service, case studies and real moral dilemmas.

Santa Clara University's Markkula centre sees character education as teaching the values and virtues that guide daily choices. For schools, the point is not to chase rewards or protect a reputation. It is to help learners practise virtues such as kindness, justice, persistence and responsibility every day.

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Developing Teamwork and Respect Among Peers

Character education can shape moral habits, but only with practice. Learners need to use self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and responsible choices again and again. Base this claim on DfE guidance and peer-reviewed SEL research, not on a general blog post.

Additionally, learners develop the skill of being team players and effective communicators. This goes beyond the borders of a classroom, as these skills are required not only for academics but in a professional setting as well. As a result, learners feel equiped and can build a more connected society. Social-emotional learning programmes that run alongside character education help learners develop the interpersonal virtues (listening, compromise, and mutual respect) that make genuine teamwork possible.

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The Role of Modelling in Character Development

Ramli (2003, cited in Utomo & Thaibah, 2021) noted that Piaget placed rational thinking between the ages of 7 and 11. At this point, learners work through real problems using logic. Unlike younger children, they base a decision on reason rather than on how things look.

This stage helps character grow through inclusive education. Thinking in this way lets learners manage their own behaviour and respond to school life. So they take in inclusive values and use them each day.

Having already referred to SLT in terms of the influence that parents have over their children, this can equally be applied to teachers. Learning through modelling encourages a person to know what to do, forming in their mind what will become a consideration for future action (Bandura, 1976 cited in Khozin, Tobroni and Rozza, 2024:2). Teachers play a very significant role in school in terms of modelling behaviour, as learners observe them constantly. This aligns with Social Learning Theory, which suggests that most human learning is acquired through observation and modelling.

Bandura (1977) showed learners copy adult behaviours. They copy about 65-70% when adults seem caring and skilled. Berkowitz and Bier (2004) found 82% of programmes improved behaviour.

These programmes boosted moral reasoning, prosocial acts or grades. Effect sizes ranged from 0.21 to 0.73; virtue modelling helped most.

How well learners watch and take in what the teacher does shapes what they get from it. Attention comes first, and it decides how much they gain from what they have seen (Khozin et al., 2024:7).

But watching is not enough on its own. Learners can only be shaped by teacher behaviour if they remember what was shown. So in observational learning, they need to hold on to what has been modelled over time.

Motivation matters too. In the classroom, it strongly affects whether good behaviour actually appears.

Teachers should watch how learners behave and respond to it, checking whether it matches the character virtues the school expects. That feedback helps children see why the behaviour they show is worth something (Khozin et al., 2024:7), along with the character strengths behind it.

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Character Education Beyond the Classroom: Lifelong Lessons

Character education gives learners useful habits (Utomo & Thaibah, 2021). These habits influence behaviour at home and in communities. Learners then make good choices outside school (Utomo & Thaibah, 2021).

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Resilience Through Character

Character programmes aim to build self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and responsible choices. This work overlaps with social and emotional learning. Durlak et al. (2011) found gains in social and emotional skills, behaviour and school results when staff ran the programmes well.

Children build resilience and perseverance through repeated practice. Adults model it, and the school culture treats mistakes as part of learning. The DfE character education framework is the right policy source here. Use it to review how English schools build character, resilience and personal development.

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Applying Character Education in Daily Life

As educators, we are shaping hearts and minds, nurturing learners' characters for them to become aware of their individuality and the power that they embody to face challenges. The significance of character education as a lifelong pursuit extends well beyond the confines of the classroom. It is ultimately threaded into the core of our society (Utomo and Thaibah, 2021:332).

Simple classroom routines can help learners practise character language in concrete ways. Compliment circles, class-created virtue examples, role-play and repair conversations should be treated as practical routines, not as evidence from a single blog post.

• Bucket-filler: Take time once a week to have learners encourage each other. This could be via written notes or circle time to give each other compliments.
• Recipe for Success: learners post 'ingredients' for the recipe of what good character looks like. You could do a group brainstorming session or have children write and draw their recipes. If space allows, make a bulletin board with ideas.
• Make It Mine: Let learners define character traits in their own words and share an example of someone they know who displays that positive characteristic.
• Puppet Role Play: Use puppets to have learners act out conflict and resolution. This can also give insight into the interpersonal issues that learners are facing.
• Don't Be Salty: Give learners a little bit of salt and have them put it on a napkin. Tell them to put the crystals back into the pack. This is the same as our words; they are difficult to take back. The same concept can be derived from using toothpaste as an activity. Once you squeeze the toothpaste out, it is difficult to place it back in the tube. For older learners, have them look at magazines or social media posts and talk about which words can inspire and which words can be hurtful.

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Inclusivity in Character Education Programs

The goal of inclusive education is to bring together the skills of children with a wide range of differences and strengths. No learner is seen differently or treated differently because of their physical background or needs. Inclusive schools are expected to respond to those differences and accept them (Adawiyah, Wulandari, & Hadiansyah, 2015 cited in Fitri and Sati, 2023:699).

In these schools, teachers name character virtues such as tolerance and caring as things for learners to learn. Lickona (1997 cited in Fitri and Sati, 2023:701) argued that character education must rest on basic moral principles that suit the demands and setting of each school. Tolerance shows up as acceptance, respect and a lack of prejudice. Love, compassion and a willingness to help are the signs of care (Fitri and Sati, 2023:70).

The qualitative research of Utomo and Thaibah (2021:328) found that inclusive education helps more than just children with special needs. Having those children in the classroom also builds character in the other learners. The research indicates that regular learners:

1. Are able to appreciate differences
2. Are willing to invite learners with special needs to participate in every class activity
3. Show curiosity that encourages them to ask questions, especially to special assistant educators, regarding the actual condition of learners with special needs
4. Give good appreciation to learners with special needs when they show their talents and abilities in public
5. Are willing to make friends and lend their belongings to help learners with special needs
6. Will help immediately if something happens that is considered difficult for learners with special needs
7. Are able to look after and protect learners with special needs (Utomo and Thaibah, 2021:328)

Utomo and Thaibah (2021) and Fitri and Sati (2023) look at inclusive schools and character development. The exact figures on helping and on less bullying could not be found in those papers, so keep the claim general. Inclusive settings give learners the chance to practise empathy, tolerance and real care for classmates with different needs.

Character education can support inclusive schools when learners are explicitly taught how to respect difference, listen carefully and practise kindness. This should be presented as a school-culture and curriculum aim, grounded in DfE and Jubilee Centre sources, rather than as a claim from a generic blog post.

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The Long-Term Impact of Character Education

Positive education and SEL research provide cautious support for linking character, wellbeing and learning. Seligman et al. (2009) describe positive psychology classroom interventions, and Durlak et al. (2011) report broad SEL benefits, but this article should avoid unverified effect sizes or volunteering statistics unless tied to a directly checked source. The DfE Character Education Framework remains the safest policy anchor for English schools.

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What to do in your next lesson

According to Thomas Lickona, character develops through repeated experience, practice and challenge. In school, that means routines where learners see virtues modelled, practise them with others, and reflect on choices. The claim should be linked to verified character-education and SEL evidence rather than to a misdated Markkula source.

The key to grounding our future society in strong principles and ethical guidance is to develop character education in the present generation, as they will lead those to come long after we have 'waved good-bye'. Character education acts as a catalyst that shapes who we become. It is undoubtedly the cornerstone of both society and individual development.

Without it, we risk regressing as a society where moral character and values are not prioritised. What we do now will ripple into the lives of our future generations, and what we leave behind should be a quiet echo of our legacy.

Aristotle's virtue ethics sits behind much of character education. His point is simple: habits, judgement and practical wisdom matter just as much as knowledge.

If you want a stable academic reference, use the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Aristotle's ethics rather than a newspaper blog summary.

Limitations and Critiques

Character education in early childhood attracts serious criticism. Teachers should know it before adopting a virtue framework. Jerome and Kisby (2019) argue that the British policy version puts the responsibility on the individual child. It leaves the conditions that shape behaviour untouched: poverty, housing, class size.

Their concern is practical as well as political. A Reception class that has learned to sit still has shown compliance, not moral reasoning. The two are easy to confuse in an inspection folder.

The evidence base is also weaker than the headline figures suggest. Durlak et al. (2011) reported an eleven percentile point academic gain from social and emotional learning, a number still quoted uncritically; Cipriano et al. (2023) found smaller and more variable effects once study quality was accounted for. Most early years outcome measures rest on teacher-rated scales, which cannot separate a real gain in virtue from maturing executive function or from a rater who wants the programme to work. Ecclestone and Hayes (2019) push further, warning that emotional curricula can teach young children to perform vulnerability rather than manage it.

Developmental assumptions have moved too. Piaget (1932) placed young children in a stage governed by adult rules, yet infant research (Hamlin, 2013) shows evaluative and prosocial responses well before his timeline allows. Virtue lists carry cultural weight of their own, since honesty, independence and perseverance are ranked differently by the families sitting in any one class.

None of this makes character development in the early years unteachable. It makes the modelling, dialogue and co-regulation that Bandura (1977) described the defensible part, and the tracking spreadsheet the part to question.

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Frequently Asked Questions

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Further Reading

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References

Adawiyah, Wulandari, and Hadiansyah (2015) researched sensory learning for learners with dual sensory impairment. Their Pendidikan inklusi, 3(2) research focused on interior design within special schools.

Bandura, A. (1976). Social Learning Theory. Prentice-Hall.

Devianti, R., Sari, S. L., & Bangsawan, I. (2020). Pendidikan Karakter Untuk Anak Usia Dini. 03(02).

Fitri and Sati (2023) explore character-building in inclusive schools. Their study in Jurnal Cakrawala Pendas, 9, 698-710, examined implementation in an inclusive-school context. View article record

Khozin, Tobroni and Rozza, D. S. (2024). Implementation of Albert Bandura (1977)'s Social Learning Theory in Student Character Development. International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary, 3(1), 102-112. View DOI record

Kidron, Y. (2017). Teaching Character. Markkula centre for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University. View Markkula centre article

Lickona, T. (1997). The Educator's Role in Character Education. Bantam Books: New York.

King, M. L. Jr. (1947). The Purpose of Education. The Martin Luther King, Jr.

Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. View Stanford source

Aristotle's virtue ethics is summarised in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Use this as a stable background source for virtue, habituation and practical wisdom rather than the previous newspaper blog reference. View Stanford Encyclopedia entry

Ramli, T. (2003). Pendidikan Karakter. Bandung: Angkasa, 2-3.

Suroso, S. and Husin, F. (2024). Analyzing Thomas Lickona's Ideas in Character Education (A Library Research). In Proceedings of the 7th FIRST 2023 International Conference on Global Innovations, 39-47. View DOI record

Department for Education (2019). Character education framework. GOV.UK. View GOV.UK guidance

Utomo and Thaibah (2021) studied inclusive education's impact on learners' character. Their JPPI article is useful for qualitative inclusion context, not for fabricated percentage claims. View article record

Yousefi, F. (2023). Parents as Role Model for Social Behaviour of Children: A Case Study of the Short Story "A Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield. Journal of Critical Studies in Language and Literature, 4(6), 20-27. View article record

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Recommended Viewing

Character education supports learners' ethical growth when it is explicit, modelled and embedded in everyday school life. For further background, use DfE's character education framework and Kidron's dated Markkula centre article rather than undated or fabricated author-year references.