The Character Wheel is a model that is used to describe and develop students’ character. It consists of four main habits, which are further divided into twelve sub-habits.
The wheel is a didactic planning tool that gives the teaching team a clear description of what character a tenacious student has.
In the character dimension, we work with how we react and behave when we interact with the outside world. To operationalize the dimension, we use the model “The Character Wheel”, which via four habits and twelve sub-habits provides the opportunity to focus student conversations and design teaching that address the development of students’ character (Andersen, 2020).
The Character Wheel is an extension of Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer’s tenacity model (Lucas, 2018). The core principles of the model centre on how we can strengthen students’ development in relation to:
• believing in their own abilities
• controlling themselves
• being committed
• creating competencies to activate and expand networks
Among other things, the model can also contribute to awareness of when students’ character is brought into play, and the model can track development over time and help to develop the language across the school community (Andersen, 2020).
