Gotta know why! Preliminary evidence supporting a theory of virtue learning as applied to intellectual curiosity

Virtue education is gaining popularity in institutions of higher education. Given this growing interest, several theoretical accounts explaining the process of virtue learning have emerged. However, there is scant empirical evidence supporting their applicability for intellectual virtue. In this study, we apply a theory of virtue learning to the development of intellectual curiosity among undergraduates. We find that learning why virtue is relevant and important to one’s education is consistently and moderately correlated with increases in intellectual curiosity across time points and analytic approaches. A weaker yet still positive association is found with increases in knowledge of intellectual curiosity. The implications of these results connect with pedagogical recommendations stressed across intellectual and moral virtue education.

Teaching Intellectual Virtues, Changing Attitudes

This chapter discusses the prospects of interventions designed to weaken epistemic vices and promote virtues. The first section discusses the prospects of two strategies for the cultivation of intellectual virtues. These are: explicit education and the habituation of virtue. It concludes that both strategies encounter obstacles that make their success unlikely. The second section is dedicated to attempts to foster virtue by stimulating emulation when in the presence of role models or exemplars. It argues that despite its current popularity, and evidence of some success when educating cohorts of children, this strategy is unlikely on its own to be very effective for those who are most in need of virtue education. The third section describes self-affirmation techniques consisting in the affirmation of values and offers indirect empirical evidence that indicates that the self-affirmation strategy might be successful when trying to reduce the expression of vicious behaviour, and over time, might even lead to the development of more virtuous conduct.

‘E-TAP’ CURRICULUM FOR VIRTUE EDUCATION: A FIT ANALYSIS TO THE ‘SKOLA-2030’ CURRICULUM

The virtue education curriculum ‘e-TAP’ is one of the recent efforts for improving character and virtue education at school in Latvia from preschool till grade nine. The objective of this research was to provide evidence regarding whether this curriculum is appropriate (‘fits’) to the Latvian context, in particular in reference to the Skola-2030 curriculum. Based on fit and feasibility theory, this work addressed the research question: “How does the treatment of virtues of the e-TAP curriculum fit to the treatment of virtues of the new Skola-2030 curriculum?”. The analysis used statistical descriptive frequency analysis of the virtues of each programme and comparative analysis between the two document sets included in each of them, using Excel software. The results show that Skola-2030 programme stresses performance and civic virtues, while the e-TAP programme underlines moral and intellectual virtues. Performance virtues are the most important ones in Skola-2030 (38 %), but account only for 17 % in the e-TAP curriculum. In addition, in Skola-2030 curriculum civic virtues account for 23 %, while in e-TAP they are only 8 %. In the e-TAP curriculum, moral virtues account for half of all the mentions (50 %) and intellectual virtues for 25 %, whereas in Skola-2030 those virtue groups account for 22 % and 18 %, respectively. The high ‘complementarity fit’ of both programmes suggests that the e-TAP curriculum could considerably enrich the Skola-2030 educational offer. Suggestions for e-TAP programme improvement and further research are put forward.

Aristotelian Virtue Education and Education for Sustainable Development

This chapter considers the merits of integrating virtues education into education for sustainable development (ESD). ESD has aimed for the moral transformation of learners since its inception, aiming to shape learner values, attitudes, and behaviors. Understanding sustainability virtue and virtue development along Aristotelian lines, this chapter argues that reconceptualizing ESD’s transformative aims in terms of virtues education has several merits: It highlights the significance of human flourishing as the ultimate goal of sustainability; highlights the moral dimension of sustainable development; highlights the importance of experiencing the best things in life and of practicing sustainability virtue in a virtue-loving social environment; and helps to organize ESD’s transformative ambitions and structure our understanding of how they are to be achieved. The chapter also addresses two potential criticisms of the virtues approach, including that virtues concern individual behavior rather than coordinated collective action, and that Aristotelian virtue thinking is essentializing and parochial.