Human excellence is defined as the core of a person’s optimal character at a particular stage of development. One framework proposed to foster human excellence consists of competence, compassion, conscience, and commitment (4Cs). This study profiles students’ character development based on the Human Excellence framework by identifying developed and underdeveloped indicators within each core. Data were collected from the responses of open-ended questions given by 91 students. The written responses were analyzed through qualitative coding and thematic categorization to identify patterns related to students’ character development based on the Human Excellence Core. To aid interpretation and improve readability, the frequency of emerging themes was presented descriptively in percentages. The results indicate that the indicators of physical health and motivation and study habit (competence core), generosity by helping others (compassion), justice (conscience), and gratitude and living faith in daily life (commitment) are the most developed indicators. Meanwhile, the indicators of reflective thinking (competence), empathy (compassion), respect (conscience), and self-awareness (commitment) are the underdeveloped indicators. These findings suggest that student-related, pedagogical, and cultural factors may contribute to the underdevelopment of certain indicators. Accordingly, reflective learning is proposed as a potential pedagogical intervention to support the development of human excellence.
Pradita et al. (Tue,) studied this question.