Critical Considerations on Issues in Character Assessment

Evaluation is essential for developing effective education and for introducing it to students. The same applies to character education as well, but evaluating character is not a simple task. Character is a value-oriented concept of ‘a desirable image of human being,’ constantly changes throughout one’s life, is often affected by situations, and has multiple aspects. Regarding these characteristics, I discuss that interpretive tradition is more suitable than positivist tradition in evaluating character. When positivistic measurement participates as a pivotal role, serious problems would occur. It could lead character education into the mean of indoctrination, and students’ characters could be distorted by concentrating only on some aspects. After all, it could make all of the efforts on character education useless that had been done before. Here I suggest principles of character assessment to retain its original purpose for improving character education and cultivating students’ characters.