The diary of virtues for primary school children: A reflective activity and a qualitative study from the MelArete project

Dialoguing with the main existing traditions in ethical education, namely character education, the cognitive developmental approach, and the caring approach, this article presents the MelArete program and explains the theoretical framework on which it is grounded. The program is designed to educate primary school children to reason about the ethical concepts of good, care, and virtue. The educational activities in the MelArete program include writing a diary of virtues, that is, a reflective journal in which children narrate virtuous gestures they carried out or observed in others. This study used the empirical phenomenological method to analyze the contents of the 96 diaries that have been collected during the first implementation of the program, which involved 8–10 year old children attending Italian primary schools. The analysis aimed at understanding the essence of children’s experiences of virtues. The qualitative study points to the influence of writing in fostering primary school children’s ethical reflection.