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Drawing upon philosophical virtue theory (Kreeft, 1986; Maclntyre, 1984; Meilander, 1984; Pieper, 1966), as well as its growing psychological support (Peterson & Seligman, 2004; Vitz, 1990), we designed a pilot intervention for a small group of adolescents in an academic day-treatment program at a juvenile justice center. J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels were used to facilitate virtuous character development in group discussions and journaling exercises. Self-report ratings of seven virtues were obtained at pretest and posttest with the Youth Virtues Scale, a modified version of Cawley, Martin, and Johnson's (2000) Virtues Scale. Teachers also provided a global rating of virtuous behavior. Engaged students were significantly more likely to report improvements in charity and fidelity than students who did not invest in the program; fortitude and prudence approached significance. Engaged students also showed more teacher-rated changes in virtuous behavior. We discuss the development of the intervention, qualitative findings around ethical issues, study implications, and recommendations for future research.
In his critically acclaimed book After Virtue, Alasdair Maclntyre (1984) proposed that our pluralistic and relativistic culture is producing a generation of "moral stutterers" who are incapable of discerning right from wrong. Hoff-Sommers (1984, 1993, 1999) concurred, and suggested that the way to resolve the ethical dilemma created by this social climate is to explicitly teach virtues. A perusal of philosophical literature on virtues reveals that most acknowledge two specific lines of development in this area: four "cardinal" Aristotelian virtues of justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude; and three "theological" Thomist virtues of faith, hope, and love (Kreeft, 1986; Lewis, 1943; Maclntyre, 1984; Meilander, 1984; Pieper, 1966).
For centuries, both oral and written narrative has been used to foster moral development, although such an approach grew out of fashion during the non-narrative era of Kohlberg and neo-Kohlbergian theories of moral education (Carr & Steutel, 1999). There has been, however, a relatively recent revival in the interest in the use of stories to foster moral development (Bettelheim, 1976; Bruner, 2003, 2008; Coles, 1989; Cunningham, 2001; KiIpatrick, Wolfe, & Wolfe, 1994; Kupperman, 1999; McGavock, 2007; Vitz, 1990), especially that of a virtuous nature (Cain, 2005; Carr, 1991; Carr & Steutel, 1999; Hoff-Sommers, 1993; Maclntyre, 1984; Nussbaum, 1986). Literature is uniquely suited to facilitate moral development because of the...