TITLE:
Adolescence and Character Education (Meta-Synthesis Study)
AUTHORS:
Ilhan Kaçire
KEYWORDS:
Adolescence, Character Education and Character Education Program
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.16 No.4,
April
22,
2025
ABSTRACT: The efforts to impart the values and social norms of society to young people have been an important goal for every society and specifically for educational institutions. Especially in adolescence, while individuals show rapid development in terms of pubertal maturation, acquiring social values and developing social skills, they have great problems in accepting and transforming them into behavior. The fact that this period is a phase of adversity for individuals and that attitudes and behaviors that are not welcomed by the society are intensively acquired during this period makes character education even more important. Over time, from the past to the present, many studies have focused on character education and different studies have been carried out on the factors that affect the character education of the individual. Based on the findings, it has been found that these factors are intertwined with each other and that these factors directly or indirectly affect the other. Moreover, these problems within the factors have negative reflections on the character development of the individual. This study is a meta-synthesis of 33 scientific thesis (master’s/doctoral) studies and articles conducted in Turkey between 2000 and 2016. The target of this meta-synthesis is to examine the research on character education in adolescence, to create a general framework based on the findings and to draw attention to the importance of the subject. As a result of the review, the findings on character education in adolescence can be categorized under five main headings. These are: a) the necessity of character education as a course in secondary school education programs, b) the necessity of a structure based on the cooperation of stakeholders in character education, c) the inadequacy of teachers who will provide character education in this field, d) the priority order of values that shape character education, e) the effectiveness of character education programs. In addition, in the discussion section, how character education should be in adolescence according to today’s perspective is tried to be answered.