Teaching with and for Virtue

In this dissertation, I explore virtue, teaching virtuously, and teaching virtue. I explore moral issues surrounding character and education with the ultimate aim of finding further clarity on how character education courses and programs should be taught. More broadly, I consider virtuous action and belief in various (usually educational) contexts. I explore the themes of caring relationships, moral education, the aim of education and the role of the teacher, and the relationship between virtuous behavior and virtuous mental states.

In Chapter 1, I introduce the themes of the dissertation in more detail. In Chapter 2, I argue that friendship can be utilized to promote student character development. In Chapter 3, I argue that humility is a virtue with both a mental and behavioral component, contrary to most accounts which are fully mental. In Chapter 4, I argue that whenever epistemically permissible, teachers are morally required to suspend judgment on whether their students will achieve their academic aims (such as getting into college or passing a class) when the odds are stacked against them. Finally, the Appendix provides two examples of transformative pedagogy playing out in college-level philosophy classrooms.