Ethos Education Winter 2013/4 | Page 28

positive education for the future ethos positive education for the future An Example of a Character-Based School Culture Project Dr Chi-Ming (Angela) Lee illustrates a CBSC indicator framework with ten principles for implementing and evaluating school moral and character education and its application t Taiwanese primary and secondary schools Moral and character education had been a mandatory subject in Taiwanese schools for several decades. However, since 2004 a moral and character education course was no longer part of formal curricula due to educational reforms. The ongoing policy of moral and character education is the “Moral and Character Education Improvement Program” (MCEIP), which stresses characterbased school culture (called CBSC), intended to balance Eastern and Western, traditional and modern cultures. The Taiwanese Ministry of Education funded me through a grant to develop a systematic and feasible indicator framework for implementing and evaluating the moral and character education of schools in 2007, as I am the drafter of the MCEIP. I therefore have the honour of introducing a CBSC project I conducted for two years to show an example of the indicator framework applied in a junior high school (here called School X), to British and overseas readers. Ten dimensions of indicator framework The indicator framework for implementing and evaluating school moral and character education of primary and secondary schools contained ten respective and complementary dimensions, including characteristics of school, administrative leadership, teacher professionalism, resources integration, formal curriculum, informal curriculum, hidden curriculum, student progress, school atmosphere and sustainable development (as seen in Table 1). Table 1 the indicator framework Ten dimensions characteristics of school administrative leadership 26 Indicators Indicator 1 schools with comprehensive educational goals and well thought out project for moral and character education Indicator 2 schools with administrators’ moral leadership