Character Education to Address Elementary Students’ Emotional and Behavioral Development: a Quasi-Experimental Study

Abstract

Most states now require some form of character education to be taught to students in the United States. At the same time, school personnel are encouraged to use evidence-based practices to best support their students’ needs. A current character education program based in positive psychology – The Positivity Project (P2) – is experiencing massive uptake in schools across the nation, but to date there is no experimental research available on the program. The current study includes a quasi-experimental design to investigate the relationship between fourth-grade students’ exposure to the P2 curriculum and changes in their teacher-reported emotional and behavioral problems. Results indicated that compared to a control group, students experiencing the P2 program demonstrated significantly greater reductions in their externalizing (g = .6) and internalizing (g = .7) behaviors across the first half of the school year. Future research needs are proposed.