Purpose The purpose of the project we report on in this practitioner paper is to illustrate how character education might become a multi-directional, dialogical process between faculty and students. We analyze two grant-supported forums for educational development: (1) a pedagogy seminar for developing teaching strategies for fostering the virtues of respect, open-mindedness, and courage across the introductory-level curriculum, co-facilitated by two faculty colleagues, and (2) a pedagogy circle designed to support sustained learning and applications to practice, co-facilitated by two student partners. Design/methodology/approach Our approach to analysis includes a review of the ways our 20-year-old student–faculty pedagogical partnership program can foster the focal virtues of our project – respect, open-mindedness and courage – and a mapping of how each of the seven strategies for character development articulated by the Educating Character Initiative might be enacted through our pedagogical partnership program more generally and through our grant-funded project in particular. Findings When engaged through pedagogical partnership, all seven approaches to character development can shift toward a multidirectional dialog that deepens into new forms of relationality. Originality/value Most approaches to character development focus on how faculty can nurture virtues in students: a one-way and monological process. The originality and value of our approach is that it models, enacts and fosters a multi-directional, dialogical process between faculty and students that supports character education for both groups. The unique set of structures and practices that build on and extend the benefits of our long-standing student–faculty pedagogical partnership program, which we detail in this paper, offers a model that other institutions can adapt for their own contexts.
Purpose This article examines difference in interdisciplinary character education programs in higher, secondary and elementary education. Such successful “classical education” curricula focus on “Great Books” or “classics,” but their canon-based approaches have drawn criticism for difficulties with incorporating difference. The innovative, inquiry-driven “Great Questions” curriculum of Villanova University's Humanities major represents a “classical” approach that remains grounded within its formative Augustinian tradition while reflectively opening to noncanonical texts. Design/methodology/approach While “Great Books” curricula advance the type of classical formation of virtue described by philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, he worries about their distance from living concerns, including difference. Analysis of Marilyn Nelson's narrative poem, “Minor Miracle” (1997), illustrates the ways that difference can animate studies of the virtues and the virtues can inform this dramatized racial conflict. The article draws on Anika Prather and Angel Parham's argument for inquiry-based approaches to classical education that can incorporate works like Nelson's. Findings The “Great Questions” curriculum of Villanova's Humanities major addresses the challenges of incorporating difference into interdisciplinary character education in two ways. First, turning from a canon-based curriculum obviates the contentious “zero sum” games involving adding and subtracting authors from a reading list. Second, the department's faculty reading group enables new noncanonical texts to be chosen around shared questions within a living tradition of inquiry, rather than interpolation. Originality/value This article sheds promising new light on difference and the growing field of “classical” character education. While analyzing a contemporary poem on racial conflict, the article both describes and demonstrates the “Great Questions” approach to interdisciplinary character education.
Purpose This article argues that listening is a central practice to civic-oriented character education, offering a model that prepares students to lead with empathy, generosity and a commitment to civic life. Design/methodology/approach This article provides an overview of three historical cases of listening: Quaker activist Benjamin Lay's interpersonal generous listening, which shows the importance of listening across difference and acting on it; the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) West African programming, providing examples of organizing equitable development in diverse contexts; and former Burkinabé President Thomas Sankara's (1983–1987) empowering of citizens through a radical institutional listening, providing an example of grassroots, citizen-centric governance. By using examples from these contexts, this article establishes a framework for students to engage with a diverse set of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic dialogic and listening exercises. Findings The cases represent important examples of listening, as well as concrete, practical examples to learn from and incorporate into classroom practices to develop and strengthen students' character virtues. By examining how the cases embodied these practices, the article demonstrates how educators can translate them into pedagogy which fosters democratic and civic engagement. The framework presented encourages students to see listening as not just receptive but also as a form of civic leadership. Originality/value In connecting character education to civic engagement amid a global historical context, the article offers a model for education that prepares students to lead with generosity, empathy and integrity.
Purpose This paper asks how AI ethics education should respond when technologies do not merely extend professional activity but participate in reshaping the practices through which professional identities are formed. It argues that AI ethics literacy, while necessary, is not enough under these conditions and develops a formative, character-based approach to AI ethics education centered on professional identity formation. Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a conceptual and philosophical approach. It reconstructs and evaluates an extensionist account of technological change, develops the concept of constitutive power and brings this account into conversation with professional identity formation, character education and technomoral virtue. Drawing on the philosophical work of Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, the paper then develops a character-based framework for AI ethics curriculum design. Findings The paper offers practical implications for AI ethics curriculum design in higher education. It proposes a staged, character-based framework that moves beyond stand-alone AI ethics modules toward longitudinal, formation-oriented curricula. Educators are encouraged to design learning environments that cultivate technomoral virtues through reflection, repetition and engagement with technologically mediated professional practices. Research limitations/implications This paper uses a conceptual and philosophical approach. The proposed character-based framework is therefore not evaluated through classroom implementation or longitudinal assessment using empirical research designs. The paper focuses primarily on professional education in higher education and may require adaptation for other educational or cultural contexts. Future research could empirically examine how character-based AI ethics curricula shape professional identity formation across disciplines and how such frameworks operate within specific institutional contexts. Practical implications The paper offers practical implications for AI ethics curriculum design in higher education. It proposes a staged, character-based framework that moves beyond stand-alone ethics modules toward longitudinal, formation-oriented curricula. Educators are encouraged to design learning environments that cultivate technomoral virtues through reflection, repetition and engagement with technologically mediated professional practices. Social implications By reframing AI ethics education as a formative practice, this paper highlights the broader social stakes of professional education in technologically mediated societies. Professionals formed without sustained attention to moral cultivation may reinforce technological systems that reproduce injustice, exclusion or harm. A character-based approach emphasizes responsibility to the common good and situates professional practice within its social and civic consequences. The framework advanced here underscores the role of education in sustaining ethically responsible professions amid ongoing technological transformation. Originality/value The paper introduces the concept of constitutive power to explain how technologies reshape core professional practices, norms, roles and identities. It develops a novel character-based model of AI ethics education by bringing medieval Islamic philosophy into conversation with contemporary accounts of technomoral virtue and professional identity formation. In doing so, it offers a distinctive contribution to AI ethics education and shifts the educational focus from correction toward formation.
