Narrative, Narratology, and Character Education

This paper deals with the character education through narratives from the perspective of narratology. According to brain/mind sciences, story is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories. We interpret every level of our experience by means of narrative. Although cognitive science is associated with mechanical technologies like robots and computer instruments that seem unliterary, the central issues for cognitive science are in fact the issues of the narrative mind.

we organize information in story form. It is how we understand the world around us, and communicate each other. The personality formation and mental development are closely linked with narratives. Narratives are useful to character education. There are three methods in the narrative moral education: traditional narrative moral education, formal narrative moral education, and ordinary narrative moral education. On the other hand, there are also three other narrative moral education methods: contents centered moral education, process centered moral education, and reflection centered moral education method.

From the perspective of narratology, there is a concrete narrative level as text and three abstract narrative levels such as story, narration, and textuality. While the traditional narrative moral education and the contents centered moral education are related to the story level of the narrative, the formal narrative moral education and the process centered moral education are associated with the narration level of the narrative. The ordinary narrative moral education and the reflection centered moral education can correlate with the level of textuality. This paper, therefore, shows how narratives play a role in character education, and how the main components of the narrative levels can be used effectively for that.

Keywords: narrative, narratology, character education, levels of narrative, story, narration.