부산대학교 도서관

Character education programs in elementary schools are believed to be important for fostering moral development and preparing children to thrive in civil society. Character develops through social relationships across contexts. However, transgressions, such as school bullying, threaten the relationships that foster character development. Forgiveness may be considered a moral character virtue that promotes mutually beneficial relations among persons and contexts; but no empirical model exists describing the relations among forgiveness and other character attributes, particularly in elementary school students. Accordingly, I used a sample of 606 fourth- and fifth-grade students (54.3% female) to explore forgiveness in relation to constructs described in extant models of forgiveness: emotion awareness, perspective-taking, humility, empathy, sympathy, caring, generosity, and love. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated forgiveness was positively associated with all constructs, indicating a positive manifold among the assessed attributes of character. Furthermore, to explore the robustness of these findings, relations were compared across gender, grade, and race. Model fit was acceptable across the subgroups, and forgiveness remained positively correlated with all constructs, indicating that the findings were robust. In addition, differences in some model fit indices and latent correlations suggest nuances in the relations across demographic subgroups. Implications for research and education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]