Character Compass: Four Directions for Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success

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Scott Seider Shelby Clark

Character Compass

Four Directions for Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success

Scott Seider, Shelby Clark, Madora Soutter

$80.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Harvard Educational Publishing Group
11 November 2025

Philosophy & theory of education; Educational psychology; Educational strategies & policy

The popular volume on the power of character development in the classroom now features new chapters on intellectual risk-taking and open-mindedness, plus student, teacher, and school leader reflections on the value of the practice

Character Compass, Second Edition returns to three, high-performing urban schools in Boston to reassess their distinct commitments to character education. Classical Academy prizes moral character, College Bound Middle School emphasizes performance character, and Civitas Prep prioritizes civic character. To this group, Scott Seider, Shelby Clark, and Madora Soutter add Bright Ideas Middle School, which champions intellectual character. They describe the ways in which these four school's distinctive character goals lead them to emphasize different programming and practices and to nurture different dimensions of their students' characters.

Seider, Clark, and Soutter reconnect with the students that were interviewed more than a decade ago to ask how character education influenced their trajectories, and they invite the volume's original school leaders to share how their thinking has and has not changed. Their research reaffirms the foundational strength of character education in building a powerful school culture where students can thrive, and a new case-study on a school emphasizing intellectual character broadens the framework's reach.

With its rare longitudinal and retrospective perspective, Character Compass, Second Edition provides K-2 educators and school leaders with powerful guidance for making character development central to their mission of supporting student success. Updates also help practitioners hone their chosen approach to best complement their own unique institutional commitments, community, and context.

By: Scott Seider, Shelby Clark, Madora Soutter
Imprint: Harvard Educational Publishing Group
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: second edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9798895570302
Pages: 324
Publication Date: 11 November 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Scott Seider is a professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at Boston College. A former secondary teacher, he is the author or coauthor of several books, including Schooling for Critical Consciousness and Educating for Justice. Shelby Clark is a principal investigator and project director at The Good Project, based at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studies how teachers within a community of practice implement dilemma-based lessons and how these lessons potentially foster student character growth. Madora Soutter is an assistant professor of education at Villanova University, where she also directs the undergraduate teacher education program. She has worked as a classroom teacher in public, private, and charter schools.

Reviews for Character Compass: Four Directions for Building Powerful School Culture and Student Success

""Every school teaches character--either inadvertently through its culture, or intentionally and planfully. Character Compass is the best book I have read that distinguishes the domains of student character--moral, performance, civic, and intellectual--through compelling, longitudinal case studies of successful schools powered by character education.""--Ron Berger, senior advisor, EL Education, and author of An Ethic of Excellence and Leaders of Their Own Learning ""For educators who believes it's time to equip students with the skills to face the tests of life, not just a life of tests, Character Compass is the book to read. I've not read another book that offers such a compelling, student-centered roadmap to cultivate a school-wide culture of character.""--Arthur Schwartz, president, Character.org ""The first edition of this book was a game changer for anyone passionate about character education and its vital role in promoting human flourishing. It offered a compelling case for why schools must be intentional and strategic in their character education practices to achieve meaningful success. This updated edition builds on that powerful foundation, reaffirming its core arguments while making them even more relevant to today's educational landscape.""--Tom Harrison, director, Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues