RESEARCH ARTICLE Understanding the Moral Values of Young People and the Key Influences on their Character Development * Beng Huat See School of Education, Durham University, Durham, UK Abstract The aim of the paper is to explore young people’s perceptions of moral values and the kind of influences that shape their behaviour. The study is based on the perceptions of 1,997 children in England at the point of transition from primary to secondary school. Data was collected from interviews, questionnaire surveys, and documentary analysis. The findings suggest that young people have a good understanding of moral values. They value trust and honesty above all values. Tolerance and courtesy were less valued. Young people also demonstrate a high level of moral awareness and an understanding of what makes a “good” person. Primary pupils were more likely than secondary pupils to trust their teachers and see them as important moral agents. This is important for children who come from homes where there is a lack of positive role models. If schools and teachers are to play a role in the character development of young people, efforts have to be made to build that trust and respect. And teachers themselves could help by modelling the kind of behaviour they want to see in the young people. Future research could examine how teachers’ behaviour can influence young people’s concept of morality. Received: April 19, 2018 Accepted: August 06, 2018 Published: August 26, 2018 Copyright: © 2018 See BH. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Corresponding author: BengHuat See, School of Education, Durham University, Leazes Road, Durham, UK E-mail: b.h.see@durham.ac.uk Citation: See, BH. Understanding the Moral Values of Young People and the Key Influences on their Character Development. Interdisciplinary Education and Psychology. 2018; 2(2):1. Open Access Interdisciplinary Education and Psychology 1 of 32 See BH. Interdisciplinary Education and Psychology. 2018, 2(2):1. Keywords Character, values, transition phase, pupils’ perspectives, role of teachers Introduction Over the last two decades the behaviour of our youth as an educational issue has become part of the political agenda in England. When the new Labour government came into office the 1 first White Paper on education, Excellence in Schools (DfEE , 1997, p. 10), stated that schools and families should take responsibility for the character development of children. Eighty-five percent of those who responded to the Green Paper Schools: Building on Success (DfEE, 2001) supported the provision of ‘education with character’ (DfES, 2001). When riots broke out across the England in 2011, David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, attributed the unrest to the ‘twisted moral code’ of the young people (Cabinet Office, 2011), and put the responsibility on parents and schools to bring about changes in young people’s understanding of morality (Cabinet Office, 2011). The independent report Riots, Communities and Victims Panel, appointed in the aftermath of the riot recommended further study of character education in British schools. Despite such strong rhetoric, government initiatives to enhance character education remained patchy and marginal (Arthur et al. 2010). A survey of 1,000 teacher trainees suggests that teacher trainees were not adequately equipped with the skills for moral development (Revell & Arthur, 2007). While character education is seen as part of citizenship education, it is not part of the curriculum in teacher education. As in the UK, character education in the US had also been described as unsystematic and uncontrolled (Berkowitz, 1 DfEE Department for Education and Employment, now known as the Department for Education (DfE)