Parents’ Exemplary Behavior and School Ethical Climate in Students’ Character Building

Mohammat Hairul Umam, Rahayu Mardikaningsih, Didit Darmawan

Abstract


Character building among school students develops through repeated social experiences within family and school environments. This systematic literature review examines the contribution of parents’ exemplary behavior and school ethical climate to students’ character development and explores their complementary relationship. The evidence base comprised 24 publications, including 20 studies contained in two predefined literature corpora and four additional internationally verified studies. Narrative and comparative synthesis was used because the reviewed studies varied substantially in constructs, samples, measures, and outcomes. Findings indicate that parental influence operates through behavioral modeling, warmth, attachment, involvement, monitoring, and consistency between communicated values and actual conduct. School ethical climate contributes through shared norms, fairness, moral exemplarity, discipline, safety, belonging, and institutional consistency. Evidence further suggests that family and school environments function complementarily: parental modeling establishes early moral orientations, whereas school climate provides broader social situations in which those values are reinforced, challenged, and practiced. However, direct evidence testing the interaction between parents’ exemplary behavior and school ethical climate remains limited. Future longitudinal and multilevel studies should examine their combined effects and identify mediating mechanisms underlying sustainable character development.



Keywords


parents’ exemplary behavior; school ethical climate; character building; moral development; parental modeling; school climate; prosocial behavior.

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23447518

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