The Effectiveness of Character Education on Wisdom,  Academic Hope, and Prosocial Behavior in Students

Zahra  Dehghani; Farhad  khormaei; Seyed Mehdi  Poorseyed

doi:10.18502/ijme.v18i20.20165

Zahra Dehghani Educational Psychology Department, Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, Shiraz University, Shiraz. Iran.
Farhad khormaei Educational Psychology Department, Educational Sciences & Psychology Faculty, Shiraz University, Shiraz. Iran.
Seyed Mehdi Poorseyed Department of Psychology and Counselling, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18502/ijme.v18i20.20165

Keywords: Ethics, Bioethics, Hope, Ethics education, Wisdom, Social behavior, Character.

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of character education on wisdom, academic hope, and prosocial behavior among university students. The study employed a quasi-experimental design with a post-test and a control group. Participants included two groups of students from Shiraz University who were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group participated in a twelve-session program focused on developing etiquette-based professional conduct, and at the end, both groups completed the questionnaires on wisdom, academic hope, and prosocial behavior. The validity and reliability of these instruments for use in Iranian culture have been found to be satisfactory. The results of multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that etiquette-based character education had a significant effect on all three variables of wisdom, academic hope, and prosocial behavior. A key implication of these findings is the importance of paying attention to character education in educational settings.