Dear Colleagues,

Research on the psychology of interpersonal forgiveness has been increasing, with forgiveness education garnering recent attention. Forgiveness education has been investigated as an approach to decrease anger, enhance emotional development, increase psychological well-being, and improve interpersonal relations in adolescents and children alike (Enright et al., 2007, Hui & Chau, 2009; Shechtman et al., 2009).  Forgiveness education can serve as a form of social emotional learning, as well as character education and/or peace education. Although worldwide research on forgiveness education with children, adolescents, and young adults is increasing (Rapp et al., 2022), more is needed to determine what is most effective when incorporating forgiveness education into the school curriculum and other educational and therapeutic settings. Additionally, it remains to be seen how differences in effectiveness may be related to duration, content, and setting of the education/intervention. Gaps in the current literature include, but are not limited to, how best to teach students of different ages and cultures about forgiveness, differences between research and educator led forgiveness education, how duration of the education/intervention impacts results, the benefits of offering forgiveness education to students’ parents, educators’ and mental health professionals’ knowledge of forgiveness, and how results are maintained over time.

Currently, much of the work on forgiveness focuses on adults. Therefore, more research is needed on the applications of forgiveness education for children and adolescents as a form of SEL and/or character education in the school environment and other contexts. In this Special Issue, we welcome both theoretical and empirical research papers that examine the impact of forgiveness education on students’ understanding and practice of forgiveness; the development of forgiveness as a moral virtue; the effectiveness of forgiveness education and intervention with children, adolescents, and young adults in different grades, cultures, and educational and therapeutic settings; and issues related to infusing forgiveness education into the school curriculum and other contexts of youth development.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Educational and psychotherapeutic and applications of forgiveness across cultures
• Children’s, adolescents’ and young adults’ perspectives on forgiveness
• Development of forgiveness as a moral virtue in children, adolescents, and young adults
• MTSS and Forgiveness Education
• Teachers and mental health professional’s knowledge of forgiveness
• Forgiveness education as SEL and/or character education

The deadline for manuscript submissions is 31 December 2023.

Aim & Scops of our Journal Education Sciences: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education/about.

Prof. Dr. Suzanne Freedman
Prof. Dr. Radhi Al-Mabuk
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• educational and psychotherapeutic applications of forgiveness
• cross-cultural research on forgiveness education
• social–emotional learning
• character education
• forgiveness intervention
• forgiveness as a moral virtue