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Funded Research Projects The John Templeton Foundation awarded grants in the amount of $10,000 to seven teams of teachers and researchers taking part in the Maxims Research Grant Program. In support of their projects, each team was awarded an additional $500 for the purchase of curricular resources and materials. The teams are currently investigating how to best teach maxims, and they are examining how meaningful and motivational maxims can be for students. Whether you are a teacher, a student, a parent, or a researcher, we think you will enjoy reading about each of the exciting research projects and getting to know the grant recipients. We welcome your comments on the research projects, and you may send them to maximsnet@Templeton.org
Children
and Proverbs Speak the Truth: Proverbs and proverbial laws of life will be an integral part of Ms. Holmes's fourth grade curriculum within a variety of projects. Students' artwork will display illustrated posters; family, friends, and community members will be invited to attend puppet plays and view students' acting-out performances of maxims and proverbs. Animal related proverbs will be researched and applied to science units, and other proverbs from around the world will be employed during research in social sciences, literature, and the mass media (proverbs in advertising, caricatures, cartoons, comic strips, newspaper headlines, etc.). By stressing the fact that worldwide laws of life in the form of proverbs are indeed ubiquitous, the students will also realize that this wisdom reflects common experiences and insights into human nature. By emphasizing proverbs with strong moral messages in the various teaching units, the teacher and researcher will engender the positive character development of young students. Specifically, maxims and proverbs will be utilized in an Ethics unit, a United Nations' unit, and a Science/Math unit of study. Teaching
and Learning Maxims with Urban Youth The project will engage a class of 6th graders at Lansing Middle School who normally would take a yearlong life skills/character education course. The project collaborators will select four character qualities that are a good developmental match for middle school students, such as positive thinking, perseverance, honesty, and kindness. Three maxims for each of the four traits will then be taught to children in the program group as part of their character education/life skills course. Instruction will include a variety of methods--including fables and true stories, classroom activities, history, current events, interactive discussion, and homework assignments--to develop cognitive understanding of each maxim, personal commitment to the truth of the maxim, and behavioral practice applying the maxim. For each of the four target qualities, students will select a favorite maxim and copy it into their personal "Maxim-Izer" (an attractive notebook provided to each student), rewrite the maxim in their own words, explain in writing and to their peers in class discussion why this maxim is their favorite, explain what the maxim teaches about the related character trait, find historical figures who have acted the maxim, select a person (parent, relative, coach, etc.) they know who exemplifies the maxim, and write and present an essay explaining how that person lives by the maxim in thought, word, and deed. Parents of the participating students will also be involved, documenting and assessing the impact of the project on their children. Last, the researchers and teachers will produce a "Maxim-Izing Life" video that will be used as part of the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs training materials. Teaching
and Learning Maxims From Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Ethics of the
Fathers The project will develop, implement, and evaluate a course for teenage students using biblical and rabbinical maxims, proverbs and aphorisms, to teach ethical, moral and religious values of a universal nature, as well as values and concepts specific to Jewish culture, religion and civilization. Each class of 12-15 students will meet for two hours per week for approximately thirty weeks. Students will study and memorize maxims in their original Hebrew formulation in the Bible and in post-biblical literature as well as examine different commentaries on the maxims, which have been written over the centuries. Students will also compare and contrast biblical and rabbinical maxims with analogous maxims from English, American and other cultures. They will also compare and contrast maxims within Jewish culture and tradition that contradict one another. In order to acquire a sense of how the maxims can be applied to specific life situations, students will be asked to locate stories in newspapers to identify current events to which the maxims they are learning could be applicable. Students will be asked to keep a diary or journal throughout the year to record real life situations in which they actually thought about and applied the maxims they are learning or encounters where they did not act in accordance with a maxim. All these strategies are aimed at having students think about the maxims and their application to their own personal lives. Maxims
Matter to Me A collaboration of the Durham Scholars Program and the Kenan Ethics Program, the project will take a group of sixth graders on a journey of self-discovery, investigation, and collaboration to help them learn about maxims as tools for life and strive to enable each child to develop personal "ownership" of a maxim. At the beginning of the academic year, fifteen students will be selected randomly from the thirty entering students in the Durham Scholars Program. These students will proceed through a series of modules -- Sampling Maxims, Choose Your Maxim, Getting the Maxim Story, Maxims in Disguise, Making Maxims Move, Telling the Maxim Story, Models of Maxims, Maxims Matter to Me, and the Maxims Show. The Durham Scholars Program is a 20-year education outreach initiative designed to foster college access and matriculation among young people who live in six of the most economically distressed neighborhoods in Durham, North Carolina. Integrating
Maxims with Cultural Identity in the Socio-Moral Development of
Eighth Grader Social Studies Students The goals of the project are to (1) integrate the educational use of maxims into the regular eighth grade social studies curriculum; (2) impact the moral and character development of the children, and, (3) help bridge the cultural values gap that exists between the white ethnic, African-American, and Latino students at an ethnically and racially diverse middle school. All project activities will be integrated within the regular syllabus of the eighth grade social studies curriculum. The teacher and researcher will engage the students to identify maxims from African-American, Latino, Native American, and Euro-American cultures. In general, maxims will be the focus of activity one day each week. The teacher will strive to integrate maxims into normal homework and grades assignments so that students perceive the "maxims activities" as an integral part of the course itself. Each student will keep all maxims gathered by the class in a separate 3-ring binder so that the students will have this resource once the academic year ends. The assessment activities associated with the project include comprehension and application of the maxims studied, developmental interviews constructed from a domain theory perspective, and a self-concept interview designed to assess the manner in which morality is incorporated into one's personal identity. Maxims
and Moral Education: An Integrated Approach to the Thought of Benjamin
Franklin and Rabbi Israel Salanter The teacher and researcher will create a four week unit of study for juniors and seniors in a Jewish day high school that will revolve around the writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and the father of the Mussar (moral discipline) Movement, Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810-1883). Both the free-thinking, deistic Franklin and the highly traditional, decidedly theistic Salanter used the same techniques for improving character: using personal notebooks, they each created lists of virtues and attended to the attainment of those virtues by studying, memorizing, and repeating maxims which concretized them. Students will study, compare, and contrast the primary and secondary sources on Franklin and Salanter, placing each in historical context. Each student will be responsible for both an American civic virtue and its Jewish equivalent, as well as maxims, which embody that virtue. Each student will write a paper, which sets those maxims into an historical, literary, and exegetical frame, exploring the personal meaning of the maxims, and teaching them to the rest of the class. During the unit of study, the students will keep notebooks in which they will reflect on the virtue they have selected, their behavior in light of that virtue, and the efficacy of their maxims to help acquire that virtue. The culminating activity will be a Circus Maximus, during which the entire school will circulate among learning stations decorated with banners created by the students, based on their maxims. Each artist will have an opportunity to discuss his or her banner with the visitors. The banners will then be used to decorate the school's new building. Teaching
and Learning Maxims with Urban Youth The researchers and teachers will design and pilot-test a model program to improve the academic achievement and attendance of Albany's urban youth by engaging them in a search for maxims about "Achieving Their Dreams." The young people will collect, assess, analyze, and organize maxims into a book of wise sayings for younger children. The program will also provide an opportunity for adolescents to teach the maxims to elementary-aged students. The researchers will collect, analyze and report information on how urban youth of different ages rate the credibility of maxims and the effectiveness of using stories, poems, or music in the presentation of maxims. The researchers and teachers will also organize a teacher's workshop in which participants in the action research share their findings with a broader audience of educators and youth.
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