School Staff and Parents’ Beliefs About the Role of School for Pupils’ Character Education in Latvia

Abstract

This paper presents a mixed-method research aimed at identifying how school and teachers’ role for character education at school is understood in Latvia. The theoretical framework of the study is based on the principles of virtue ethics. The viewpoints of 1116 respondents (parents, teachers, and school leaders) from all five regions of Latvia were collected in 2018-2020, using two questionnaires containing closed and open questions. The results provided new insights into how parents and school staff perceived the role of the school and the teachers in pupils’ value and virtue education in Latvia. Schools should promote pupils’ character development alongside academic excellence, but, while teachers should encourage good morals and values in pupils, using both ‘caught’ and taught’ strategies, the main responsibility for children moral growth is on parents and families, not on teachers and the school. The majority of both school staff and parents were favourable to a shared responsibility and collaboration between school and family to promote character education inside and outside of the classroom.