Development of an Assessment Tool for Diagnosing the Effectiveness of Character Education: Focusing on communal character

The purpose of this study is to develop a test tool to evaluate the educational effectiveness of communal character (respect, care, cooperation, and responsibility) in the performance and feedback processes of character education. To achieve this, Kirkpatrick's educational evaluation model and Berkowitz's criteria for character education effectiveness were applied to develop three indicators: satisfaction with character education, community character (individual and class), and a character-friendly environment. Items were selected based on an analysis of previous studies. The content validity of the evaluation indicators and test items was initially verified through an expert Delphi survey, leading to the determination of preliminary test items. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 1,424 elementary, middle, and high school students from character education research schools in Gyeonggi-do. Preliminary and main tests were carried out, and the validity and reliability of the items were confirmed, resulting in the selection of the final items. The findings of this study are as follows: First, indicators and test tools were developed to comprehensively evaluate the performance of character education, moving beyond the traditional focus on personality test-centered effectiveness evaluation. Second, to address the social desirability bias in personality tests, a class-level character assessment tool was developed, providing an improved method for self-report measures.