The Promise and Perils of Prototyping

McGrath presents a prototyping proposal to better classify character education programs. He proposes 7 key elements that can facilitate identifying more and less typical programs. This proposal appears to be a very good start for improving the organization of the character education field and facilitating research. This commentary highlights 4 areas of attention for how this proposal can be carried out. First, it seems important to broaden the degree of participation in a prototyping endeavor so as to include important stakeholders and foster buy-in to support the effort. Second, a prototyping effort is field defining, so the content validity of a prototyping model must be thoroughly vetted by a panel of experts in character education. The best procedure would be an iterative one with attention to how many and which elements should be included. Third, the work of prototyping is quintessentially theoretical in that the definitions of core concepts, their relations, and their application are theoretical questions. The commentary explores key areas for deeper theoretical attention, particularly related to the question of identity development. Finally, empirical testing prior to implementation is necessary to develop confidence in the construct validity of the prototype model.