Character Compass : How Powerful School Culture Can Point Students Toward Success

A new edition is coming in the Fall of 2025! Pre-order your copy of Character Compass, Second Edition today (9798895570302).

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2013 American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Moral Development and Education Outstanding Book Award

In Character Compass, Scott Seider offers portraits of three high-performing urban schools in Boston, Massachusetts that have made character development central to their mission of supporting student success, yet define character in three very different ways.

One school focuses on students’ moral character development, another emphasizes civic character development, and the third prioritizes performance character development. Drawing on surveys, interviews, field notes, and student achievement data, Character Compass highlights the unique effects of these distinct approaches to character development as well as the implications for parents, educators, and policymakers committed to fostering powerful school culture in their own school communities.

Scott Seider is an assistant professor of education at Boston University, where his research focuses on the civic and character development of adolescents and emerging adults. He is a former secondary teacher in the Westwood (Massachusetts) and Boston Public Schools. Dr. Seider is the author of Shelter: Where Harvard Meets the Homeless (Continuum, 2010), which won the American Educational Research Association’s Moral Development and Education Outstanding Book Award, and coeditor of The Engaged Campus: Certificates, Minors, and Majors as the New Community Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He also writes the “Civic Engagement on Campus” column for the Journal of College and Character.