The Character Conundrum

Book excerpt: The Character Conundrum is a practical guide for developing confidence, independence and resilience in primary and secondary classrooms. Tackling the hotly-contested question of what role schools can play in developing ‘character', the book untangles the big debates in this area and outlines how teachers can support their pupils to develop the skills and mindsets that will help them to thrive academically. Based on a combination of ground-level investigations and academic research, the book offers a simple, evidence-based approach that can be implemented at every level of school life. The key to this approach is being deliberate and consistent: knowing which mindsets, skills and habits you’re trying to develop, and planning the details of your classroom culture, relationships, routines and instruction so that they align and combine to address your aims. When you do this, the author contends, seemingly minor changes to your practice can have a major effect on pupils. The book contains a step-by-step guide to bringing this approach to life in your classroom, including a framework of pupil outcomes, a flowchart of teacher actions, classroom case studies and a wealth of tried-and-tested strategies from primary and secondary schools across the UK. A lack of confidence, independence and resilience is a major barrier to learning for many pupils and dilutes other efforts that schools make to support them. The Character Conundrum argues that teachers can help pupils develop these characteristics in any school context and illustrates how they can do so within and through their day to day teaching. Written with passion and clarity, it will be essential reading for primary and secondary teachers, as well as policy makers with an interest in ‘character’, grit and resilience, and any education professionals committed to giving students greater ownership of their learning and setting them up to succeed.