The significance in using role models to influence primary school children's moral development: pilot study

This article reports on a pilot study aiming to examine a role-modelling character education project through an Aristotelian framework, by adopting a virtue-led approach. Aristotle famously believed virtues should be taught to children at a young age through habituation, which gradually develops into phronesis-guided virtuosity, and he considered what nowadays is referred to as ‘role modelling’ as having a large influence on children through the emotion of emulation (zēlos). Therefore, the pilot study aims to answer the question to what extent a virtue-led role modelling intervention in character education can influence students’ moral development. The intervention teaches school-appropriate virtues to students in a primary school in Saudi Arabia. While the study is just starting, this article focuses on some pertinent and problematic preliminary questions about conceptual assumptions and research design.