Dutch adolescents, ages 12 to 14, completed the Utrect-Groningen Identity Development Scale, which encompasses separate scales for commitment in exploration for relational, school, and occupational identity. Results show that relational identity becomes consistently stronger as adolescents age, and that for girls, relational identity is much more…

Defines "at-risk youth." Describes characteristics of resilient children and their families, friends and mentors, schools, and communities. Discusses camp program practices that have been shown to promote resiliency: focus on youth development, intentional processes that target the personal domain, organizational elements borrowed from…

Discusses the development of the human hand from birth to age three as it contributes to the formation of human personality. Considers how parallels in eye, hand, brain, and motor skill development portray the evolving complexity and adaptation of the human grasp and illustrate Montessori theories about the relationship between physical experience…

The Catholic Magisterium has made a distinction between homosexual orientation (disordered but not sinful), homosexual activity (sinful, but judged "with prudence"), rights of gay and lesbian people, and the Church's pastoral responsibilities to gay and lesbian people. Both the Vatican and the American bishops have clearly stated that the topic of…

The contribution of various educators, including William Holmes McGuffey, in developing a character education-based curriculum in the United States is discussed. The role of teachers in moral education of students too is described.

"Positive Action," a K-12 program, aims to promote character development, academic achievement, and social-emotional skills and to reduce disruptive and problem behavior. The program is based on the philosophy that you feel good about yourself when you think and do positive actions, and there is always a positive way to do everything.…

The authors offer a new, integrative conceptualization of the relational self based on a synthesis of recent approaches to the self and significant others. This conceptualization provides a sharper and fuller definition of the relational self than does any existing approach alone and a common framework to interpret findings from separate…

This booklet is a tool to help teachers find ways to keep their commitment to education strong. It shares success stories of educators who have kept their professional dedication alive, despite day-to-day hassles and significant obstacles. It also outlines steps teachers can take to keep their energy levels high. In each section space is provided…

This exploratory study investigated whether the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) can predict an infant's behavior on mastery motivation tasks at 1 and 2 years of age. Subjects were 31 normal, full-term infants from white, mostly middle class families. Infants were assessed using the NBAS with Kansas Supplements (NBAS-K) at a…

Moral judgments of Israeli and Soviet educated adolescents who had recently arrived in Israel were compared on a relativistic-realistic dimension, using a specially designed instrument - the Morality Shifting in Adolescence Questionnaire. Soviety educated adolescents were significantly more realistically oriented in moral judgment and in both…

This paper explores the issue of sex bias in a contemporary major theory of moral development, cognitive moral theory. It explains critical reactions by Carol Gilligan and others questioning whether cognitive moral theory adequately accounts for female moral reasoning and behavior in its theory and research procedures. Several general…

This paper describes a basic framework for integration of computational and energetic concepts in psychological theory. The framework is adapted from a general effort to understand the neural systems underlying cognition. The element of the cognitive system that provides the best basis for attempting to relate energetic and computational ideas is…

This document explores the way in which courage, as a central virtue, and friendship, as a valued human state, have a significant place within the view of the education of character. Education of character is determined to bridge the gap between moral judgment and moral action. This paper has five sections. First, the need for character education…

Article presented an analytical summary of some of the main features of lifelong education (and the process of lifelong learning which it presumably facilitates), together with some critical review. (Author/RK)

Five personality scales administered as part of a larger study of personality correlates of children with articulation errors resulted in descriptive statistics on grade by sex samples, school effects, test-retest coefficients, and intercorrelations. (Author/KM)