From Academia to Character Education: Using Contemporary Neuroscience Research and Executive Functioning Skills to Develop Classical Virtue

The research question explored through this capstone project is: How can a professional development series for teachers foster student development of classical virtue in a neuroscientifically-informed manner? This project is a three-part professional development series with each session focusing on a specific classical virtue (fortitude, justice, or wisdom) and its relation to particular executive functioning skills and neuroanatomy. Once this knowledge is had, the teachers tap into their prior knowledge on classroom practices and combine their new knowledge of virtue and neuroscience with it through a collaborative process which creates high-quality, classroom-applicable ideas for all teachers to implement into their craft. This project combines ancient history and contemporary neuroscience to support a school character education program centered on classical virtue and utilizes research-based adult learning approaches to support teacher practices which foster student character growth. The literature reviewed includes scholarly work focusing on what makes adult learning effective, the effectiveness of character education programs, the history of classical virtue, what executive functioning skills are and how they develop, and what specific neuroanatomy is related to specific virtues. This project developed an effective way to support teacher knowledge and skill of how to implement classroom applications of neuroscientifically-informed character education development. A hope of this project is that educators can use its professional development approaches as a benefit for the important work of supporting the positive development of the humanity of all students.