This study aims to examine the effect of the “Values Education Program with Stories (VEPS)”, applied to students studying in the 8th-grade, on the democratic attitude, moral maturity and target behavior development levels of the students. In this research, a semi-experimental design defined as "Pretest-Posttest Control Group Model" was used. The sample of the research consisted of 64 students studying in Selçuklar Secondary School affiliated to Mersin Provincial Directorate of National Education in 2018-2019 academic year. Before starting the research, a program called “Values Education Program with Stories (VEPS)” was developed and this program was applied to the experimental group for 16 weeks, as 1 session and 2 lessons (80 minutes) per week. "Moral Maturity Scale", "Democratic Values Scale"and "Behavior Rating Scale"were applied to experimental and control groups as pretest and posttest to test the effectiveness of the program. For the analysis of data T-Test for Unrelated Measurements, Two-Way Anova for Mixed Measurements and Covariance Analysis were used. As a result, it can be said that VEPS is an effective program in increasing students' moral maturity and target behavior development levels. Suggestions were made to increase the number of such programs that will improve character and value development for students and to conduct more experimental studies on this subject.
Character Development, Values Education, Moral Maturity, Democratic Attitude, Development of Target Behavior