Handbook of Moral and Character Education

Second Edition

There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development

and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have man-

dates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral

and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning

and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological

rhetoric of the ﬁeld with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes

the extensive changes that have occurred over the last 15 years and points forward to the

future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of develop-

mental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to

college settings, and much more.

Larry Nucci is Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University

of California, Berkeley and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Development.

Darcia Narvaez is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre

Dame and Executive Editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

Tobias Krettenauer is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier

University, Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Education and Consulting Editor for

Child Development.

Educational Psychology Handbook Series

Series Editor: Patricia A. Alexander

International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change, Second Edition

Edited by Stella Vosniadou

The International Guide to Student Achievement

Edited by John Hattie, Eric M. Anderman

The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning

Edited by Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Clark A. Chinn, Carol Chan, and Angela M. O’Donnell

Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance

Edited by Barry J. Zimmerman, Dale H. Schunk

Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction

Edited by Patricia A. Alexander, Richard E. Mayer

Handbook of Motivation at School

Edited by Kathryn Wentzel, Allan Wigﬁeld

International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change

Edited by Stella Vosniadou

Handbook of Moral and Character Education

Edited by Larry P. Nucci, Darcia Narvaez

Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools, Second Edition

Edited by Michael Furlong, Rich Gilman, and E. Scott Huebner

Handbook of Emotions in Education

Edited by Reinhard Pekrun and Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia

Handbook of Moral and Character Education, Second Edition

Edited by Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez, and Tobias Krettenauer

Handbook of Moral and Character

Education

Second Edition

Edited by Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez,

and Tobias Krettenauer

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

NEW YORK AND LONDON

ROUTLEDGE

Second edition published 2014

by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

First edition published by Routledge 2008

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

The right of the editors to be identiﬁed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors

for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the

or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including

photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and

are used only for identiﬁcation and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Handbook of moral and character education / edited by Larry Nucci, Tobias Krettenauer, Darcia

Narvaez – Second edition.

pages cm. – (Educational psychology handbook)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Moral education–Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Personality development–Handbooks,

manuals, etc. I. Nucci, Larry P. II. Krettenauer, Tobias. III. Narvaez, Darcia.

LC268.H264 2014

370.11'4–dc23 2013034759

ISBN: 978-0-415-53233-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-53238-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-11489-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Minion

by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

CONTENTS

List of Figures ix

List of Tables x

Notes on Editors xi

Notes on Contributors xiii

Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview 1

LARRY NUCCI, DARCIA NARVAEZ, AND

TOBIAS KRETTENAUER

Part I DEFINING THE FIELD: HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL,

AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 9

Chapter 2 Philosophical Moorings 11

THOMAS WREN

Chapter 3 Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Their Perspectives on

Moral Education 30

GUOZHEN CEN AND JUN YU

Chapter 4 Traditional Approaches to Character Education in Britain and

America 43

JAMES ARTHUR

Chapter 5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas: Moral Education in

the Cognitive-Developmental Tradition 61

JOHN SNAREY AND PETER L. SAMUELSON

Chapter 6 Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education 84

DANIEL LAPSLEY AND PAUL C. STEY

vi s Contents

Chapter 7 Teaching Ethically as a Moral Condition of Professionalism 101

ELIZABETH CAMPBELL

Part II THEORY-BASED APPROACHES TO MORAL AND

CHARACTER EDUCATION 119

Chapter 8 Social Cognitive Domain Theory and Moral Education 121

LARRY NUCCI AND DEBORAH W. POWERS

Chapter 9 Developing Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities 140

DARCIA NARVAEZ AND TONIA BOCK

Chapter 10 Developmental Discipline and Moral Education 159

MARILYN WATSON

Chapter 11 Constructivist Approaches to Moral Education in Early Childhood 180

CAROLYN HILDEBRANDT AND BETTY ZAN

Chapter 12 Toward a Theory of the Just Community Approach: Effects of

Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education 198

FRITZ K. OSER

Chapter 13 Contemplative Education: Cultivating Ethical Development

through Mindfulness Training 223

ROBERT W. ROESER, DAVID R. VAGO, CRISTI PINELA,

LAUREL S. MORRIS, CYNTHIA TAYLOR, AND

JESSICA HARRISON

Chapter 14 Research-Based Fundamentals of the Effective Promotion of

Character Development in Schools 248

MARVIN W. BERKOWITZ AND MELINDA C. BIER

Part III SCHOOLS-BASED BEST PRACTICES 261

Chapter 15 Pedagogy for the Whole Child: The Developmental Studies

Center’s Approach to Academic, Moral, and Character

Education 263

PETER BRUNN

Chapter 16 The Complementary Perspectives of Social and Emotional

Learning, Moral Education, and Character Education 272

MAURICE J. ELIAS, AMY KRANZLER, SARAH J. PARKER,

V. MEGAN KASH, AND ROGER P. WEISSBERG

Chapter 17 Smart & Good Schools: A New Paradigm for High School

Character Education 290

MATTHEW DAVIDSON, THOMAS LICKONA, AND

VLADIMIR KHMELKOV

Contents s vii

Chapter 18 An Application of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Dilemma

Discussion to the Japanese Classroom and its Effect on Moral

Development of Japanese Students 308

NORIYUKI ARAKI

Chapter 19 Moral and Character Education in Korea 326

IN JAE LEE

Part IV MORAL EDUCATION IN RELATION TO CIVIC

ENGAGEMENT, CITIZENSHIP, AND DEMOCRACY

EDUCATION 345

Chapter 20 Citizenship Education in the United States: Regime Type,

Foundational Questions, and Classroom Practice 347

WALTER C. PARKER

Chapter 21 Fostering the Moral and Civic Development of College

Students 368

ANNE COLBY

Chapter 22 Citizenship and Democracy Education in a Diverse Europe 386

WOLFGANG EDELSTEIN AND TOBIAS KRETTENAUER

Chapter 23 Democratic Moral Education in China 401

SHARON TO, SHAOGANG YANG, AND CHARLES C. HELWIG

Part V MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION BEYOND THE

CLASSROOM 421

Chapter 24 Positive Youth Development in the United States: History,

Efﬁcacy, and Links to Moral and Character Education 423

RICHARD F. CATALANO, JOHN W. TOUMBOUROU, AND

J. DAVID HAWKINS

Chapter 25 Community Contribution to Moral and Character

Development 441

CONSTANCE FLANAGAN, ALISA PYKETT, AND

ERIN GALLAY

Chapter 26 The Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve 456

DANIEL HART, M. KYLE MATSUBA, AND ROBERT ATKINS

Chapter 27 Education for Sustainability: Moral Issues in Ecology

Education 471

ELISABETH KALS AND MARKUS MÜLLER

viii s Contents

Chapter 28 Moral and Character Education Through Sports 488

F. CLARK POWER AND KRISTIN K. SHEEHAN

Chapter 29 A Theoretical and Evidenced-Based Approach for Designing

Professional Ethics Education 507

MURIEL J. BEBEAU AND VERNA E. MONSON

Name Index 535

Subject Index 542

FIGURES

9.1 Triune-ethics Theory Types and Subtypes 145

9.2 Baselines for Virtue Development Co-constructed by Early Experience 147

12.1 Example of a Voting Process in a Swiss Just Community Meeting 206

12.2 Minimal Elements of the JC Approach 212

12.3 Levels of Participation: a Participation Hierarchy 216

13.1 Trans-disciplinary Nature of the Contemplative Science Project 225

13.2 Dualistic vs. Dialectical Meta-models of Human Development 226

13.3 Hypothesized Model of the Extension of Basic Moral Emotions to

Embodied Moral Principles Through Social-Emotional Scaffolding 231

13.4 Hypothesized Example of How Mindfulness Can Facilitate Altruistic

Behavior in the Presence of Another’s Distress 232

13.5a/b/c/d Four Theoretical Models of the Neural-Psychological

Processes Recruited During Contemplative Practices 240–241

17.1 Moral and Performance Character Heuristic 293

18.1 Two Types of Moral Dilemma 315

19.1 The Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships 332

19.2 An Integrated Approach of Moral and Character Education 337

24.1 The Social Development Model: General Model 429

TABLES

5.1 Kohlberg’s Six Developmental Stages of Justice Reasoning 66–67

5.2 Kohlberg’s Distinctions Between Type A and Type B Moral

Orientations 70

5.3 Moral Atmosphere: Levels, Stages, and Phases 72

8.1 Development Within Domains and Curriculum Implications by Grade

Level 132–133

9.1 Ethical Skills and Suggested Subskills 143

13.1 Preliminary Taxonomy of Ethical Aims of Contemplative Education 228

14.1 Research-based Practices 253

16.1 Primary Conceptualizations of Social-Emotional Learning/Emotional

Intelligence Skills 276–277

17.1 Eight Strengths of Character: Assets Needed for a Flourishing Life 298–299

18.1 A Model of Classroom Moral Dilemma Discussion Process 312

18.2 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Students’ Moral

Development 316

18.3 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Development of Students’

Role-taking Ability 317

18.4 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Moral Stage Across Studies 318

18.5 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Role-taking Ability Across Studies 318

18.6 Characteristics of Moral Dilemma Class by S-T Analysis 321

19.1 Course Listing for Elementary, Middle, and High Schools 329

19.2 Elementary and Middle School MEC System and Contents According

to the Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships 333

19.3 Contents of High School Curricula: Lifestyle Ethics 334

19.4 Contents of High School Curricula: Ethics and Thoughts 335

29.1 The Four Component Model of Morality 508

EDITORS

Larry Nucci is Adjunct Professor of Human Development in the Graduate School of

Education at the University of California, Berkeley and Professor Emeritus of

Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published

extensively in the areas of social and moral development and directs the Domain

Based Moral Education (DBME) lab at UC Berkeley. He is Editor-in-Chief of

the journal Human Development, the author of Education in the Moral Domain

(Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Nice is Not Enough: Facilitating Moral

Development (Pearson, 2009) and editor of four other volumes including Moral

Development and Character Education: A Dialogue (McCutchan, 1989) and Con-

ﬂict, Contradiction and Contrarian Elements in Moral Development and Education

(Erlbaum, 2005).

Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. After college,

she was a church musician, K-12 music teacher, middle school Spanish teacher

and owned her own business. She also earned a Masters of Divinity. She earned

her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota, where she

became a tenured faculty member and was the executive director of the Center

for the Study of Ethical Development. She publishes extensively on moral devel-

opment and education. Her books include Moral Development in the Professions

(with Rest; Erlbaum, 1994); Postconventional Moral Thinking (with Rest, Bebeau,

& Thoma; Erlbaum, 1999); Moral Development, Self and Identity (with Lapsley;

Erlbaum, 2004); Personality, Identity and Character (with Lapsley; Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 2009); Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development (with

Panksepp, Schore, & Gleason; Oxford University Press, 2013); Ancestral Landscapes

in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing (with Valentino,

Fuentes, McKenna, & Gray; Oxford University Press, 2014); and Neurobiology and

the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (Norton,

2014). She is Executive Editor of the Journal of Moral Education.

Tobias Krettenauer is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier

University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the

xii s Editors

Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, and earned

his Habilitation degree at Humboldt University Berlin. His research on morality,

self, and emotions has been funded by several grants from the German Research

Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada

and has been published in internationally renowned journals. Currently, he is

Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Education and Consulting Editor for the

journal Child Development.

xiii

CONTRIBUTORS

Noriyuki Araki is Professor of Education at Fukuyama University, Hiroshima, Japan.

James Arthur is Professor and Head of the School of Education and Director of the

Jubilee Centre for Character and Values in the University of Birmingham, United

Kingdom.

Robert Atkins is Professor of Childhood Studies and Nursing at Rutgers University,

Camden, NJ, and Director of the Robert Wood Johnson’s Foundation New Jersey

Health Initiatives program.

Muriel J. Bebeau is Professor of Primary Dental Care–Health Ecology and Director of

the Center for Ethical Development at the University of Minnesota.

Marvin W. Berkowitz is Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education and

co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the College of Educa-

tion, University of Missouri—St. Louis.

Melinda C. Bier is Associate Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship, College

of Education, University of Missouri—St. Louis.

Tonia Bock is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Saint

Paul, Minnesota.

Peter Brunn is Director of Strategic Partnerships of the Developmental Studies Center,

Oakland, CA.

Elizabeth Campbell is Professor of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in

Education, University of Toronto, Canada.

Richard F. Catalano is Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the

Director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work

at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Guozhen Cen is Professor of Education at the Shanghai Teachers University, Shanghai,

China.

xiv s Contributors

Anne Colby is Consulting Professor at the Stanford Center on Adolescence,

Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Matthew Davidson is Vice President and Director of Education at the Institute for Excel-

lence in Ethics, Manlius, NY.

Wolfgang Edelstein is Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Human Devel-

opment, Berlin, Germany.

Maurice J. Elias is Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

Constance Flanagan is Professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of

Wisconsin—Madison.

Erin Gallay is a graduate student in the Social Foundations of Education at Eastern

Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI.

Jessica Harrison is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.

Daniel Hart is Distinguished Professor of Childhood Studies and Psychology, and Dir-

ector of the Institute for Effective Education at Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.

J. David Hawkins is Endowed Professor of Prevention in the School of Social Work at

the University of Washington, Seattle.

Charles C. Helwig is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Carolyn Hildebrandt is Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa.

Elisabeth Kals is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the Katholische

Universität Eichstätt Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany.

Amy Kranzler is a doctoral student in Psychology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick,

NJ.

V. Megan Kash is a doctoral student in the Institute of Child Health, University College

London.

Vladimir Khmelkov is Vice President at the Institute for Excellence & Ethics, Manlius,

NY.

Tobias Krettenauer is Professor of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo,

Canada.

Daniel Lapsley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology, University of

Notre Dame, IN.

In Jae Lee is Professor of Education, Seoul National University of Education, Seoul, Korea.

Thomas Lickona is Professor and Director of the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs at the

State University of New York, Cortland.

M. Kyle Matsuba is Professor of Psychology at Kwantlen University, British Columbia,

Canada.

Verna E. Monson is a research fellow at the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the

Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

Contributors s xv

Laurel S. Morris is a doctoral student in Psychology at the Behavioral and Clinical

Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cambridge, UK.

Markus Müller is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of

Siegen, Germany.

Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, IN.

Larry Nucci is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education, University

of California, Berkeley and Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the

University of Illinois at Chicago.

Fritz K. Oser is Professor of Education at the University of Freiburg, Switzerland.

Sarah J. Parker is Director of the Reeds Center, New York.

Walter C. Parker is Professor and Chair of Social Studies Education at the University of

Washington, Seattle.

Cristi Pinela is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.

F. Clark Power is Professor of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, IN.

Deborah W. Powers is a doctoral student in Human Development at the Graduate

School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.

Alisa Pykett is a doctoral student in the School of Human Ecology, University of

Wisconsin.

Robert W. Roeser is Professor of Psychology at Portland State University, OR.

Peter L. Samuelson is a faculty member of the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology,

Pasadena, CA.

Kristin K. Sheehan is Program Director of Play Like a Champion, University of Notre

Dame, IN.

John Snarey is the Franklin N. Parker Professor of Human Development and Ethics,

Emory University, Atlanta, GA.

Paul C. Stey is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology, University of Notre

Dame, IN.

Cynthia Taylor is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.

Sharon To is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human

Development, OISE, University of Toronto, Canada.

John W. Toumbourou is Professor and Chair of Health Psychology, Deakin Univer-

sity and is an Honorary Associate at the Centre for Adolescent Health (Murdoch

Children’s Research Institute), Australia.

David R. Vago is an associate psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham

& Women’s Hospital and is also an instructor at the Harvard Medical School,

Cambridge, MA.

xvi s Contributors

Marilyn Watson was Director of Programs at the Developmental Studies Center and

Program Director of the Child Development Project and currently is an inde-

pendent author and scholar, Vacaville, CA.

Roger P. Weissberg is Professor of Psychology and CEO of the Collaborative for Academic,

Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), University of Illinois at Chicago.

Thomas Wren is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, Evanston, IL.

Shaogang Yang is Professor of Psychology at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies,

Guangzhou City, China.

Jun Yu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology, Idaho State University.

Betty Zan is Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Regents Center for

Early Developmental Education, University of Northern Iowa.

INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez, and Tobias Krettenauer

The ﬁrst edition of the Handbook of Moral and Character Education published in 2008

responded to a need for a single volume resource that would present the work of leading

researchers and scholars in the growing ﬁeld of moral and character education. The

interest in moral education has not subsided since publication of the handbook. There

remains widespread agreement that schools should contribute to students’ moral devel-

opment and character formation. As was the case in 2008, 80% of states have mandates

regarding character education. Internationally, many nations such as Canada, Korea,

Japan, and China mandate moral/character education as part of their national cur-

riculum. Within Europe the interest in moral education is often subsumed under the

broader topic of citizenship education where basic concerns for developing compassion-

ate and morally engaged children and youth are at the heart of these efforts. The broad

international scope of interest in moral and character education is evidenced by the fact

that the Association of Moral Education, which held its 2011 meeting in China, includes

members from more than 35 countries around the globe.

With publication of the ﬁrst edition, we began the process of moving beyond the

controversies and debates that have plagued moral and character education by bringing

together a collection of chapters by the top researchers and scholars that reﬂect the state

of the art in the ﬁeld. Since the publication of the ﬁrst edition, new work has opened up

additional approaches to moral education, and has expanded the connections to related

areas such as citizenship education. This second edition includes updates of the foun-

dational chapters from the ﬁrst volume along with new chapters that address emerg-

ing work in areas of social and emotional development, applications of mindfulness to

moral education, sport as a context for moral growth, moral development and ecology

education, and a new section on citizenship education. In addition, the new edition

responds to the growing international scope of moral and character education by includ-

ing authors from Europe and Asia who are addressing issues of moral philosophy, moral

development, character, and citizenship within democratic societies. More than half of

2 s L. Nucci et al.

the chapters in the second edition are covering topics or include authors not within the

ﬁrst edition of the handbook. All of the chapters that appeared in the ﬁrst volume have

been edited and updated. In many cases these changes have been substantial.

PART I: DEFINING THE FIELD: HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND

THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS

In broad terms the debates over moral and character education divide along three dimen-

sions. One broad distinction is between those who view character formation and morality

as centered on the cultivation of virtues and those who argue that morality is ultimately

a function of judgments made in context. The former, who often trace their ideas within

Western culture back to Aristotle, emphasize the importance of early dispositional forma-

tion and the inﬂuence of the social group. Often these virtue-based approaches to charac-

ter education incorporate an emphasis on the attachment to groups and the role of society

in forming the young as described by Emile Durkheim (1925/1961). Traditional character

educators generally fall within this perspective. On the other hand, those who emphasize

the role of reason and judgment draw their philosophical arguments from rationalist

ethics with its emphasis on autonomous justiﬁcation for moral actions based on prin-

ciples of justice or fairness (Rawls, 2001). The focus is upon the development of moral

reasoning drawing from the seminal work of Piaget (1932), and the Socratic approach to

education. A third broad dimension is the degree to which educators place an emphasis

upon the role of emotion. Traditional and developmental approaches address in different

ways the role of emotion in moral and character development. However, the foreground-

ing of emotion is best seen in approaches that fall within the category of attachment

theory, social emotional learning and mindfulness education. These latter approaches are

discussed in detail in chapters in Parts II and III of the book.

In Part I authors address the basic philosophical, historical and theoretical issues

undergirding contemporary moral and character education. The ﬁrst chapter of this

section (Chapter 2) by Thomas Wren “Philosophical Moorings” takes us through the

Western philosophical schools of thought that buttress traditionalist and developmental

approaches to moral education. His is not a “cliff notes” reading of these philosophi-

cal positions, but rather a critical analysis of their relative adequacy as bases for moral

education. In Chapter 3, Gouzhen Cen and Jun Yu expand the attention to philosophi-

cal underpinnings by providing an overview of traditional Eastern philosophical tradi-

tions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism that have informed moral and character

education in Asian societies as well as current applications of contemplative practices

through mindfulness education in the West.

James Arthur picks up the thread in the discussion of philosophical positions that

stress the promotion of virtue through his vigorous defense in Chapter 4 of traditional

approaches to character education. His chapter provides a contemporary rebuttal to

Kohlberg’s analysis of the limits of virtue-based moral theories, and attempts to recover

the role of traditional educational practices that have had a long history in the Anglo-

Saxon approach to character education.

In Chapter 5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas: Moral Education in the

Cognitive-Developmental Tradition,” John Snarey and Peter Samuelson provide an

historical overview of the work of Lawrence Kohlberg that spawned the re-awakening of

interest in moral education in the 1970s and formed the starting point for all subsequent

Introduction and Overview s 3

developmentally-based approaches to moral education. They offer insights into the

history and personal motivations for Kohlberg’s efforts and his later struggle to reconcile

the fundamental insights from his own work with Durkheim’s sociological perspective

on moral education.

Daniel Lapsley and Paul Stey extend the discourse on virtue and reason opened by

Wren in Chapter 2 by extending it to contemporary philosophical and psychological

considerations of the connections between morality and the self. In Chapter 6 “Moral

Self-Identity as the Aim of Education,” these authors explore whether the developmen-

talist emphasis on reason can sufﬁce as a basis for moral education in the absence of

an effort to also impact the development of the “self.” They review some of the strug-

gles associated with Kohlberg’s initial approach to moral education with its absence of

a connection to the student as a moral person (issues that Snarey and Samuelson touch

on in Chapter 5). However, Lapsley and Stey do not dwell on that historical debate, but

endeavor to place the issue squarely within the philosophical and theoretical nexus that

is at the heart of the dialogue represented in the handbook.

Part I concludes with Elizabeth Campbell’s thoughtful analysis in Chapter 7 of the

ethical dimensions of teaching, and the ethical dimensions of what it is to be a teacher.

Her plea for moral autonomy and responsibility within the teaching profession is one

that must be heeded if any of the ideas presented in this handbook are to reach fruition.

PART II: THEORY-BASED APPROACHES TO MORAL AND CHARACTER

EDUCATION

Much of the forward looking work in moral and character education is taking place at

the level of theory development and theory testing. These efforts employ advances in

developmental and cognitive psychology in a reciprocal process to inform research and

theory for teacher preparation and classroom practices in the area of moral education.

Larry Nucci and Deborah Powers lead off this section with Chapter 8, “Social Cognitive

Domain Theory and Moral Education.” This updated chapter outlines the basic pre-

mises of social cognitive domain theory and reviews research that has demonstrated

that concepts of morality (fairness, human welfare) are universal and form a conceptual

system distinct from convention, religious prescription, and personal issues. The chapter

presents recent work on developmental patterns within domains, and presents research

on the applications of domain theory to classroom practices. The revised chapter pro-

vides a table with examples matching up development within each domain with illustra-

tive connections to the regular academic curriculum. The chapter concludes with recent

work at two universities employing social cognitive domain theory in the preparation of

pre-service teachers to engage in moral education.

In Chapter 9 “Developing Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities” Darcia Narvaez

and Tonia Bock bring together several cognitive and neurobiological lines of research to

make recommendations for moral character development. They suggest that the tradi-

tionalist and cognitive developmental approaches to moral character development can

be uniﬁed in instruction for moral expertise development. The Integrative Ethical Educa-

tion model spells out a ﬁve-step, empirically-derived approach for intentional charac-

ter education that moves from caring relationships to self-authorship. Attention to the

neurobiology of moral development occurs when classroom practices foster engagement

and communal imagination over self-protective concerns.

4 s L. Nucci et al.

Marilyn Watson (Chapter 10) focuses the lens of moral education on the role that class-

room structure and affective relationships have for meeting the developmental needs of

elementary school children. Watson employs attachment theory and self-determination

theory (SDT) to generate an approach to classroom structure and behavioral manage-

ment called “Developmental Discipline” that engages the child’s intrinsic motivations

for autonomy, belongingness, and competence. Developmental discipline comprised a

central element in the approach to moral and character education formulated by the

Developmental Studies Center. The revised chapter includes a discussion of Watson’s

ongoing work to infuse developmental discipline within teacher education.

Whereas considerable attention has been given to moral and character education at

the elementary school level, far less attention has been paid to other age groups. Chapter

11 by Carolyn Hildebrandt and Betty Zan, “Constructivist Approaches to Moral Educa-

tion in Early Childhood,” presents the theoretical assumptions and research on classroom

practices of a developmentally-based approach to moral development in early childhood

settings. Their work builds from extensive research and experience in the application of

Piagetian theory to classrooms in collaboration with their late colleague Rheta DeVries.

The most radical theory driven effort at transforming school culture to promote

moral development has been the “Just Community Schools” initiated by Lawrence Kohl-

berg and his colleagues. Chapter 12 by Fritz Oser, “Toward a Theory of the Just Com-

munity Approach: Effects of Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education,” updates the

chapter on the just community from the ﬁrst edition by Clark Power and Ann Higgins

D’Alessandro. Oser’s chapter reviews the history of the development of the just com-

munity approach, and captures the European experience with this form of moral

education. He provides an additional theoretical perspective that extends Kohlberg’s

assumptions and develops the notion that a key element in moral development and the

educational success of the just community is the confrontation of young people’s experi-

ences with moral misconduct.

A new direction for moral education is the integration of contemplative educational

practices through what is termed “mindfulness.” In Chapter 13, “Contemplative Educa-

tion: Cultivating Positive Mental Skills and Social-Emotional Dispositions through

Mindfulness Training,” Robert Roeser and his colleagues describe the underlying Bud-

dhist assumptions behind mindfulness, and the current educational theory and research

that supports the movement toward integrating the use of meditative mindfulness

techniques to heightening students’ emotional sensibilities and awareness of their own

motivations and desires, and to strive toward a more compassionate approach to social

interaction. Roeser and colleagues’ chapter spells out the directions for future research in

this emerging ﬁeld.

This section of the handbook ends with Chapter 14, “Research-Based Fundamentals

of the Effective Promotion of Character Development in Schools,” by Marvin Berkowitz

and Melinda Bier in which they present a narrative summary of what has been learned

regarding effective educational practices from the decades of research on character

education.

PART III: SCHOOLS-BASED BEST PRACTICES

In Part III the emphasis shifts from current theory-based work on moral and charac-

ter education to a focus on approaches that are grounded in school-based practices.

Introduction and Overview s 5

This is not to say that these school-based approaches are not also connected to theory

and research. The section starts off with Chapter 15 by Peter Brunn, “Pedagogy for the

Whole Child: Developmental Studies Center’s Approach to Academic, Moral and Char-

acter Education,” that presents the current work of the Developmental Studies Center

that began as a theory driven and heavily researched program. This chapter presents

arguably the most successful effort to date to apply what has been learned from develop-

mental psychology to the classroom. The thrust of Brunn’s chapter, however, is on how

its approach has evolved over time to accommodate to the realities of classrooms and

schools as it functions to address both the academic as well as social and emotional needs

of children.

Brunn’s discussion of the schools-based work of the Developmental Studies Center

is followed in Chapter 16 by a review of the current status of schools-based efforts to

address students’ social and emotional learning (SEL), and how attending to SEL can

complement efforts to address moral education and character formation. Maurice Elias

and his colleagues, Sarah Parker, Megan Cash, and Roger Weissberg are among the leaders

of the movement that led the Obama administration to place an emphasis upon issues

of students’ emotional safety and social emotional learning as core educational goals for

American schools.

In Chapter 17, Matthew Davidson and Thomas Lickona, “Smart & Good Schools: A

New Paradigm for High School Character Education,” address factors that they argue

serve to integrate the combined goals of high schools to produce students who attain

high academic success while also fostering moral character. In this revised chapter they

make the case that moral virtues such as honesty and fairness must be supported by per-

formance virtues such as perseverance and hard work if moral values are to be enacted

within a person’s actions.

The ﬁnal two chapters in this section present approaches to moral and character

education in the Asian countries of Japan and Korea. In Chapter 18, “An Application

of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Dilemma Discussion to the Japanese Classroom and its

Effect on Moral Development of Japanese Students,” Noriyuki Araki reviews the research

examining the effectiveness of applying moral dilemma discussions in Japanese class-

rooms. His chapter also addresses the limitations that Japanese schools encountered with

their efforts to enact traditional forms of character education. In Chapter 19, “Moral and

Character Education in Korea,” In Jae Lee provides a comprehensive overview of how the

Korean educational system works to integrate elements from both character and moral

education orientations in order to make the best ﬁt between traditional Korean cultural

traditions and contemporary educational research.

PART IV: MORAL EDUCATION IN RELATION TO CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

AND CITIZENSHIP AND DEMOCRACY EDUCATION

This section is new to the second edition of the handbook and provides chapters that

link moral development with programs that foster civic engagement, citizenship, and

democracy education. This section begins with Chapter 20 by Walter C. Parker, “Citizen-

ship Education in the United States: Regime Type, Foundational Questions, and Class-

room Practice,” that reviews the history of citizenship education in the United States.

As Parker outlines, this has been a topic that has generated controversies about both the

goals and teaching methods to be employed. This is followed by Anne Colby’s updated

6 s L. Nucci et al.

Chapter 21 on fostering civic engagement among students in colleges and universities.

Her chapter reviews the research examining the impact of college experience on the

moral development and civic engagement of young adults. As this chapter makes clear,

the process of moral development does not end in adolescence, and the college years

afford an important context for the furtherance of moral growth. Chapter 22 by Wolf-

gang Edelstein and Tobias Krettenauer shifts the focus from North America to Europe

and describes current efforts to integrate citizenship and democracy education across

a very diverse range of cultures with divergent governmental histories. Their chapter

reviews the range of approaches being attempted to engage in democratic education

throughout Europe, and the challenges posed by the oftentimes non-democratic history

of various countries and cultures within Europe. The section ends with the most recent

and perhaps most ambitious effort at democratic education taking place in China.

Sharon To, Shaongang Yang, and Charles C. Helwig present an eye-opening set of studies

in Chapter 23, “Democratic Moral Education in China,” indicating that democracy and

moral education are gaining ground among Chinese educators and the new generation

of students.

PART V: MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION BEYOND THE

CLASSROOM

Education is often deﬁned in terms of practices that schools and teachers use to inﬂu-

ence student learning and development. Children’s and adolescents’ moral development

and character formation, however, are not simply the result of schooling. The chap-

ters in Part V address how formal programs for community service, informal learning

experiences through the media, and other modes of learning beyond the classroom can

inﬂuence moral and character development. Richard Catalano, John Toumbourou, and

David Hawkins lead off this section in Chapter 24, “Positive Youth Development in the

United States: History, Efﬁcacy and Links to Moral and Character Education,” with their

revised chapter examining what has become known as “positive youth development.”

This approach inverts the usual attention to youth disorders by focusing upon areas of

youth competence or strength with the goal of anticipating problems before they emerge.

In Chapter 25, “Community Contribution to Moral and Character Development,” Con-

stance Flanagan, Alisa Pykett, and Erin Gallay enlarge the discussion by discussing the

ways in which communities contribute to the moral development and character forma-

tion of children and youth through community involvement and institutions designed

to work with children beyond the school context. Flanagan et al. underscore the import-

ance of membership and developmental experience in community-based organizations.

They discuss the processes of moral development, how a moral self develops through

membership and identiﬁcation with a community where one has mutual obligations.

Community environmental action projects proﬁt from the empathy and interdepend-

ence individuals have developed together and help young people enlarge their concerns

as they develop skills for citizenship. Their chapter is followed in Chapter 26 by an

updated comprehensive examination of the impact of efforts to engage youth through

service learning. Daniel Hart, Kyle Matsuba, and Robert Atkins in “The Moral and Civic

Effects of Learning to Serve” deﬁne what is meant by service learning and civic engage-

ment, describe the elements of effective programs, and offer powerful evidence that

such beyond-the-classroom experiences shape the moral development and character

Introduction and Overview s 7

formation of young people, including urban youth who face daily challenges of gang

involvement, drug use, and street violence.

Chapter 27 by Elisabeth Kals and Markus Müller, “Education for Sustainability: Moral

Issues in Ecology Education,” addresses an emerging concern in this age of climate

change and global development, namely how to educate young people to acknowledge

their moral and ethical responsibilities toward the environment. This chapter is new to

the second edition.

It is often said that sports build character. That cliché is critically examined by F. Clark

Power and Kristin Sheehan in Chapter 28, “Moral and Character Education Through

Sports.” They take us beyond the bromides to look at the psychology of morality within

the context of sports, and to explore the kinds of sports experiences that genuinely tap

into and build students’ moral character. Engagement in sports and sports teams is a

form of involvement in community.

Finally, Muriel Bebeau and Verna Monson in Chapter 29, “A Theoretical and Evi-

denced-Based Approach for Designing Professional Ethics Education,” review decades

of research on the impact of professional education on the moral development of health

professionals. On the basis of this research they offer a grounded theory for the integra-

tion of moral education within professional preparation generally and across disciplines.

This chapter closes the circle with the discussion of the ethical dimensions of teaching

introduced by Elizabeth Campbell in Part I of the book.

This second edition of the Handbook of Moral Development and Character Education

reﬂects the state of the art and science of the ﬁeld. This is an area of research and prac-

tice that has grown over the past ﬁve decades as the general public and political leaders

have come to realize like leaders in centuries past that education is about more than aca-

demic learning. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “To educate a man in mind and not in

morals is to educate a menace to society.” Still, perspectives vary in how best to go about

the process of education for moral development, and whether the emphasis should be

placed on the cultivation of virtue, or the development of moral judgment. Moreover,

there are concerns about the premature application of developmental research to school

practices (Nucci & Turiel, 2009). Nevertheless, there is a convergence of opinion around

the need to continue research and inquiry in this area, and to encourage schools and

teachers to include attention to moral development in their educational practices. It is

our belief that this second edition will serve as a valuable resource for efforts to engage in

both research and practice in the area of moral development and character education.

REFERENCES

Durkheim, E. (1925/1961). Moral education. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Nucci, L., & Narvaez, D. (2008). Handbook of moral and character education. New York: Routledge.

Nucci, L., & Turiel, E. (2009). Capturing the complexity of moral development and education. Mind, Brain, and

Education, 3, 151–159.

Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press.

Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Part I

Deﬁning the Field

Historical, Philosophical, and Theoretical Foundations

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PHILOSOPHICAL MOORINGS

Thomas Wren

As with the rest of human life, morality and moral education have an outside and an

inside. Seen from the outside, morality provides a way of getting along with others, and

from the inside it is a way of getting along with oneself. In other words, moral educa-

tion is at once a necessary condition for social control and an indispensable means of

self-realization. Most of us, including philosophers and psychologists as well as parents

and educators, assume that these two functions of morality sustain each other: what

is good for society is good for our kids, and vice versa. Although Nietzsche and a few

other so-called rugged individualists have rejected this assumption I will not spend time

defending it in this chapter. Instead I will focus on the second of these two perspectives,

the “inside view.”

My motives for doing this are twofold. First of all, I want to unpack

the general understanding, shared by contemporary educators of all persuasions, that

morality is a form of self-realization. Also, I want to situate this understanding within

the philosophical tradition of what, using the term in its broadest possible sense, I will

simply call “human development.”

Specialists in the ﬁelds of education and psychology may object that not all concep-

tions of moral education are developmental, and that is certainly true if we understand

development in the biological sense of an organic unfolding of innate powers, taking

place within a reasonably stable environment that sustains but does not itself shape the

developmental process. It is also true if we understand development in a nonbiological

but equally narrow sense as an ordered progress through cognitive stages, each of which

has its own logical structure.

But our everyday concept of human development is not so

narrow: there what is distinctive is not its inevitability or logical structure, but its norma-

tivity. Plainly put, most of us think of development as a movement from a less desirable

state to a better one, even though in the case of human development the “betterness” at

issue—namely, human ﬂourishing—is subject to philosophical debate.

In what follows I will trace the way philosophers have formulated the fundamental

developmental idea of human ﬂourishing, since I believe that the history of their

12 s T. Wren

struggles to understand what it means to be human have shaped the ways in which con-

temporary moral educators understand their own enterprise. I am tempted to say that

here as elsewhere in the history of ideas, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. However, to

say this would oversimplify the way theories emerge within an intellectual tradition. It

would be more realistic, I believe, to think of traditions, including our philosophical tra-

dition, as providing necessary albeit usually unnoticed moorings for a speciﬁc theory or

practice such as character education or moral judgment development. Thanks to these

moorings a theory or practice is secured, stabilized, and thereby rendered intellectually

plausible and practically useful. This point applies across the board, but as we will see in

the following pages it is especially true for the theory, research, and practice of moral and

character education.

When I spoke just now of “our philosophical tradition” I had in mind the usual pan-

theon of Western philosophers, beginning of course with the Greeks. One could begin

even further back, since ancient non-Western thought is rich with insights into the moral

dimension of selfhood—or better, the liberation from the demands of the self. However,

the non-Western part of our story is well covered in the next chapter, so let’s begin with

what might be called the early Greek cognitive-developmental conception of human

development.

SOCRATES AND PLATO

For Socrates (469–399 BCE) and Plato (428–347 BCE),

human development consisted in

increasingly adequate knowledge of the ideal forms and, at the highest level, knowledge

of the form of the Good. This form or idea (the usual two translations of the Greek

eidos) is supremely intelligible, and other forms “participate” in its goodness because

they too are thoroughly intelligible albeit more limited in their referential range. Since

even sensible things and images participate in the intelligibility of their respective forms

(the tire on my car can be understood as representing, imperfectly, the idea of a perfect

circle), they too have a derivative sort of goodness. Furthermore, something of the same

sort also holds for the cognitions directed toward these forms and things: perceptual

knowledge is good but intellectual knowledge is better. The movement from less to more

adequate modes of thinking is represented in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave (more

on this in a moment).

Although the Good was the highest in a hierarchy of ideal forms, it could be known

indirectly in the course of knowing lower forms that reﬂect its goodness—indeed, one

can get a glimmer of the highest form from the most banal perceptual experience. This

idea is not as arcane or counterintuitive as it might ﬁrst seem. We use lofty ceremonial

language to commend saints and heroes for their goodness, but we also smack our lips

after eating a hot dog and say, quite unceremoniously, “Mmm, that was good!” Banalities

such as the hot dog commendation have been the subject of language-analytic theoriz-

ing by metaethical philosophers since G. E. Moore, but they also illustrate something

very important in Plato’s theory of the forms. In our lived experience the theoretical

distinction between knowing and willing disappears. In ordinary, nonproblematic cir-

cumstances—say on a perfect day at the stadium when the home team is winning and

lunch was a very long time ago—to see or smell a hot dog cooking on the grill is by that

very fact to want it. In other words, the hot dog is perceived as desirable or, as Plato would

say, it is apprehended “under the form of the Good.”

Philosophical Moorings s 13

This account also applies to more lofty forms of cognition. Christian philosophers

and theologians inﬂuenced by Plato have hypothesized that the beatiﬁc vision enjoyed

by the saints in heaven is at once a face-to-face knowledge of God and a perfect loving

union with him. And theorists of human development have said the same thing about

knowledge of the Good qua moral, namely that it is the ideal form of Justice: to know

it is to choose it. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg are examples of this sort of moral

cognitivism.

The philosopher William Frankena is another. In his classical article on

metaethical internalism, he argued that the very locution “X is the good [or right] thing

to do” entails a motivational claim on the part of the speaker that he or she is at least

somewhat inclined to do X” (Frankena, 1958; see also Wren, 1991).

But neither contemporary cognitivists nor ancient Platonists ever thought that it is

easy to attain a direct, internally motivating vision of the Good itself. Piaget and Kohl-

berg postulated a series of logically structured stages through which one must pass on

the way to the complete fusion of moral knowledge and moral virtue. Plato, on the other

hand, simply told a story, his famous Allegory of the Cave. In it he describes a group of

prisoners who have been chained together since birth and can only see shadows on the

wall in front of them, cast by a ﬁre behind them against crude two-dimensional replicas

of things in the outside world, which of course the prisoners have never seen nor even

imagined to exist. One of the prisoners is dragged outside the cave where, after becoming

accustomed to the bright light of the real world, he attains true knowledge or what we

might call the higher stages of Platonic cognitive development. He sees for the ﬁrst time

and with increasing acuity the really real things (here read: eternal truths and values)

that were so poorly imaged in the cave. Eventually he also sees the Sun itself, which like

the Good, is the source of all things. The story does not have a happy ending, though. He

later returns to the cave, where he is reviled by the prisoners for his inability to predict

the goings and comings of the shadows on the wall. As often happens with those who try

to enlighten others, he is eventually killed.

The beauty of virtue. Plato’s most famous account of virtue is his discussion of justice

in the Republic, where he compares the tripartite structure of the soul (mind, spirit, and

appetite) to the three classes of an ideal society (rulers, guardians, and workers). Each

of these three classes has a distinctive function—ruling, protecting, and producing or

consuming goods—which when done well exhibits the virtues of wisdom, courage, and

temperance respectively. A just society is one in which all three classes work well and

harmoniously together. Similarly, an individual who is wise, courageous, and temper-

ate is said to be just in a global sense that corresponds to what we mean today by calling

someone a very righteous or moral person.

So far so good. But here as in Plato’s other dialogical writings, it is important to

recognize what precipitated his famous parallel of personal and societal justice. Much

earlier in the dialogue Socrates had been shocked by the cynical claim, represented by the

sophist Thrasymachus, that justice is nothing more than an instrument of self-interest.

In opposition, Socrates argued that justice (and by extension, virtue in general) is not a

means but rather a good in itself, a “thing of beauty” (to kalon). But what does this mean?

Is Plato grounding his moral theory in purely aesthetic value? Not at all.

Although he expounded his comparison of a just person and a just society without

going into detail about any of the constitutive virtues, it is clear from this and other parts

of the Republic that he believed each virtue has its own status as an ideal Form or eternal

truth, and hence can be known directly in roughly the same way as are the other Forms

14 s T. Wren

or eternal truths, such as the one embodied in the tire of my car. In the latter case the

eternal truth is the mathematical formula for a circle (c = Pd); in the former (the moral

judgment) it is a moral principle. Supposedly those who are truly wise understand the

hurly burly of daily life in these terms, which in the moral context means that our judg-

ments about what to do are based “on principle” in a double sense: the principle provides

a motivational component as described above and also a justiﬁcatory rationale. Under-

stood in this way, Plato’s teaching on the virtues ﬁts with the rule-oriented moral theory

of Immanuel Kant and his contemporary heirs—who include not only philosophers like

John Rawls but also cognitive developments such as Piaget and Kohlberg—as well as with

the disposition-oriented theory of Aristotle and his heirs—who include not only philo-

sophers like Alasdair MacIntyre but also most of the character educationists featured

elsewhere in this volume.

ARISTOTLE

After Socrates’ death in 399 BCE, Plato taught in the academy until he died, during which

time Aristotle (384–322

BCE) was a student and then, after Plato’s death, the founder

of a rival school, the Lyceum. The institutional rivalry between these two schools is of

little historical interest, but the intellectual rivalry between Aristotle and those of Plato’s

disciples who remained true to their teacher’s intellectual idealism is important. The

contrast is supposedly illustrated in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens, in

which Plato and Aristotle are pictured together, the one pointing heavenward toward

the realm of the ideal Forms and the other gesturing downward to the earth which, for

Aristotelians, was the truly real world.

Plato’s notion of human development was fundamentally backward-looking—the

prisoner in the cave was really trying to go back to a pristine state that he had lost, but

for Aristotle human development was as forward-looking as any other sort of organic

development. It was a goal-seeking sort of process, not a form-recalling one. It was,

in a word, teleological. Just as the internal dynamism or telos of an acorn is to grow

into an oak tree, so the telos of human beings is to develop into fully functioning,

happy, ﬂourishing rational animals. And that is what organisms do when nothing goes

wrong. Of course things can go wrong and often do, for people as well as acorns. Even

so, the acorns have an easier time of it, since they cannot err. Unless certain external

conditions are absent (the acorn falls onto a sidewalk rather than fertile soil) growth is

guaranteed, for the simple reason that acorns are not conscious of the end-state they

are moving toward.

With this we come to what may be the two most important yet least understood parts

of Aristotle’s theory of human development and, accordingly, his conception of charac-

ter and character education. The ﬁrst part is his conception of the human telos as living

in conformity with reason. Such a life may appear from the outside to be hopelessly con-

ventional, but if the “reason” to which a person conforms is his or her own reason and

not just an external social norm then it is clearly wrong to equate good character with

mindless conformity. Even so, Aristotle is often read in the latter way, owing to the second

part of his theory of human development, namely his account of character acquisition

as “habituation.” These two themes, “conformity with reason” and “habitu ation,” need to

be disentangled if we are to understand the relation between classical Aristotelian virtue

theory and contemporary theories of moral education.

Philosophical Moorings s 15

There is an important ambiguity in Aristotle’s use of the term “reason” in the context

of moral character and virtue. Sometimes he seems to mean the individual’s own his-

torically situated cognitive faculty and at other times he echoes Plato’s notion of Reason

as a transcendent reality that by its very nature always seizes upon the truth. The latter

impression is strengthened by W. D. Ross’s famous translation of the Nicomachean Ethics

(1984), where the original Greek orthos logos is rendered as “right rule” (1138b25).

However, more recent scholarship regards this choice as far too Kantian, so that now the

preferred translations are “right reason” and “practical wisdom.” Indeed, the more col-

loquial (and more literal) phrase “straight thinking” may be even closer to what Aristotle

has in mind, but this is not the place to quibble over terminology. What is important is

that for Aristotle moral reasoning was an interpretation of here-and-now situations, not

the imposition of antecedently known eternal principles onto the empirical phenomena

of the present moment.

Over the last 20 or 30 years this point has been made repeatedly by Aristotle scholars,

but it is only slowly percolating into the respective literatures of moral development and

character education. In his early work Kohlberg (1970) dismissed virtue theory as an

essentially noncognitive bundle of habits that were not only conceptually and psycho-

logically disconnected from each other (character being considered as “a bag of virtues”)

but also too situation-speciﬁc to be the subject of any realistic education program. He

eventually qualiﬁed this view (see Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) but the line had

been drawn, and character educationists such as W. Bennett (1991) who resisted the

Kohlbergian characterization of virtue as knowledge of the good also implicitly resisted

the idea at the heart of Aristotle’s own view, namely that virtue is cognitive through and

through. It is, as he put it in the Ethics, “a character state concerned with choice, lying in

the mean relative to us, being determined by reason and the way the person of practical

wisdom would determine it” (1107a1).

This idea of practical wisdom or phronesis—sometimes rather misleadingly translated

as “prudence”—is the core of what we might call Aristotle’s interactive model of cogni-

tive developmental and social learning moral psychology. Moral goodness and wisdom

are necessary conditions for each other, in that a person cannot be fully good without

practical wisdom nor practically wise without also being virtuous. So put—and this was

the way Aristotle himself put it (1144b31–2)—this famous dictum may sound like a

chicken-and-egg sort of circular argument. But if we temporarily suspend the chrono-

logical question of which precedes which, and instead analyze separately what Nancy

Sherman (1989) has called the four areas of practical wisdom, we can see what Aristotle

had in mind. We can also see the general outlines of what he would have said about the

current disconnection between the cognitive developmental and character formation

models of moral education.

The four areas of practical wisdom that Sherman identiﬁes (while adding that there

may be more) are perception, deliberation (choice-making), collaborative thinking, and

habituation. Each of these areas has its own logical geography and developmental course,

and of course all four overlap in important ways. Each has been the subject of arcane

debates among philosophers, classicists, and philologists, but their basic features are

reassuringly familiar to anyone who has raised children or engaged in any sort of moral

education. The ﬁrst area, perception, is essentially interpretative, since it is the ability to

pick out the salient features of a situation. The person with good moral perception can

“read the scene” in much the same way as a person with good social skills knows what to

16 s T. Wren

say at a funeral, an art critic sees when things come together in a painting or concert, a

military commander realizes when the battle is turning, or a coach quickly sizes up the

other team’s strengths and weaknesses.

This description of perception begins with the concrete situation and is therefore

quite different from the top-down account of moral reasoning that is also identiﬁed

with Aristotle, namely the practical syllogism. In the latter account moral cognition is

modeled on deductive inference, where a major and minor premise logically entail a con-

clusion. Analogously, the so-called practical syllogism (Aristotle himself never used this

term) combines a general value statement such as “My goal is X” with a factual statement

about the here-and-now situation such as “Doing Y on this occasion will lead to X,” from

which the conclusion follows, “Therefore I should do Y.”

True, the practical syllogism

model incorporates perception—after all, the situation-speciﬁc minor premise would

be impossible without it—but only as an accessory to the transsituational and person-

ally neutral value or moral principle that constitutes the major premise. For this reason

it would be a mistake to reduce Aristotle’s notion of perception to the task of applying

abstract principles to speciﬁc situations. Moral cognition and its developmental story

run in the opposite direction: our general knowledge of what counts as courageous, just,

etc. is the resultant of many speciﬁc interpretations of real world situations. Perception is

part of the moral response, not its prelude. As Sherman aptly puts it, “Pursuing the ends

of virtue does not begin with making choices, but with recognizing the circumstances

relevant to speciﬁc ends” (p. 4).

One might object that some people are just born with greater social sensitivity than

others, and that it would be unfair to regard them as more moral than someone who,

perhaps because of a harsh upbringing or a cognitive processing deﬁcit, often fails to pick

up important social cues. However, Aristotle sees the distribution of moral sensibility as

an educational problem, not a fairness issue. He would applaud the “sensitivity training”

that is now part of our corporate culture as well of the school and the family. He would,

I think, see such efforts as constituting an essential component of moral education.

But of course seeing and doing are not identical. They are different moments of vir-

tuous action, and this difference takes us to Aristotle’s second area of practical wisdom,

which is the deliberation that precedes choice-making. Like sensitivity, deliberative

thinking is a skill that can be learned, in moral as well as nonmoral contexts. Here again

we can think of the corporate sector, where management trainees are expected to parti-

cipate in workshops and other sorts of programs in which they learn how to improve

their ability to determine which actions are most appropriate means toward selected

ends. This ability includes such subskills as being able to prioritize multiple goals and

to integrate them in ways that minimizes conﬂict. The analogy with moral deliberation

should be obvious, regardless of whether training in this area is done formally or inform-

ally. Instruction, modeling, trial and error, vicarious experience through historical or

literary narratives, debates about hypothetical cases—moral educators have used such

practices for centuries.

Aristotle’s third area of practical wisdom is collaborative thinking, which is both the

source and the fruit of hands-on collaboration. Collaboration can be on any scale and

at any level of sophistication: within the family, among friends, civic activity, and even

across national boundaries. In every case the cognitive requirement is the ability to take

the perspective of another, and the affective requirement is the tendency to care about

whatever is revealed when one takes such a perspective. Its most primitive version is

Philosophical Moorings s 17

collaboration for mutual beneﬁt, but Aristotle believed that it is in our nature as “polit-

ical animals”—zoon politikon—to care about common goods such as the quality of our

family life itself, the preservation of our friendships, the prestige of our city, and so on.

This expansion of our horizons includes an increased sensitivity to social complexity:

children develop better understandings of why their parents worry about the things

they do, lovers learn new things about their own motivations, citizens discover in public

debate issues they never dreamed of, and so on. Social bonds are not blind attachments

but rather richly cognitive relationships, shaped not only by day-to-day interactions with

family members, friends, and associates but also by what is now called civic education.

The pedagogies for civic education are controversial—what is the correct ratio of discip-

line to creativity, how to combine respect for authority with critical thinking, etc.—but

there is little doubt that Aristotle thought collaborative thinking, like perception and

deliberation, is something that can be learned, and that this learning process was an

integral component of moral education.

As we turn to the fourth area of practical wisdom, habituation, it might seem that

here Aristotle’s emphasis will be on noncognitive processes. Many commentators as well

as moral educators who invoke Aristotle have interpreted him in that way, but within

the scholarly community the tide shifted a few decades ago (see Burnyeat, 1980; Rorty,

1980; Nussbaum, 1986; Sherman, 1989; Sorabji, 1973–1974). Those who continue to

favor the noncognitive interpretation take quite literally Aristotle’s distinction between

the intellectual and moral virtues, according to which the latter consist in habits that

regulate the “irrational” parts of the soul—i.e., the passions. These habits, Aristotle tells

us, are acquired in childhood by means of external shaping factors such as discipline,

good example, and above all by the repetition of good acts. In this way, we are told, the

child develops moral virtue as a “second nature,” a phrase that character education theo-

rists sometimes confuse with simple conformity.

The problem with that interpretation of Aristotle is that, as Sherman explains, “it

leaves unexplained how the child with merely ‘habituated’ virtue can ever develop the

capacities requisite for practical reason and inseparable for full virtue” (p. 158). As

we have seen, Aristotle insisted that full virtue is possible only with practical wisdom

(1144b30–33), which includes the heavily cognitive areas or dimensions of perception of

salience, choice-making abilities, and collaborative thinking. It is far more plausible, as

an interpretation of Aristotle but also as a description of our own children’s early devel-

opment, to suppose that habituation includes not only rewards and punishments but

also reasoned explanations as to why certain actions are rewarded or punished, certain

persons are held up as models, and so on. For a child to lack adult-level practical wisdom

does not imply that he or she has no cognitive capacities for reading situations, making

choices, or taking the perspective of others. Furthermore, a closer look at what Aristotle

said about the so-called nonrational parts of the soul—i.e., the passions or emotions—

shows that even the crudest responses of fear or anger or desire have cognitive dimensions

and hence can be directed by one’s own intelligence as well as by external pressures.

To sum up so far, it seems that each of Aristotle’s ﬁrst three areas of practical wisdom

has its own educational agenda or pedagogy. Perception is developed through sensitivity

training, which includes teaching children how to pick out the morally salient features of

a situation. Deliberative thinking is developed through what might be called managerial

pedagogy, which shapes the ability to set goals and ﬁgure out how to meet them. And

collaborative thinking is developed through perspective-taking training and, on a larger

18 s T. Wren

scale, civic education. But what about his fourth area, habituation? Does it have its own

pedagogy too?

Yes and no. Aristotle went to great length to explain how moral teachers—typically

parents—should use discipline, modeling, and consistent repetition to enable the learner

to acquire the right habits. This is the pedagogy of habit formation, but it should not be

understood as radically distinct from the other three areas of practical wisdom. Virtue is

itself a habit and so are all its component skills. For instance, children develop the habit

of reading common household social situations (perception) by observing their moth-

er’s sensitive response to a sibling’s unspoken needs, they develop an established habit of

carefully weighing the pros and cons of any course of action (deliberation) by doing so

on repeated occasions, and they expand their interpersonal horizons to civic readiness

(collaborative thinking) by emulating leaders whom they see praised and honored for

their service to the community. For Aristotle moral education was organic, not modular:

each component pedagogy made its own contribution to the goal of living a life in con-

formity to reason, but as it did so it provided the necessary conditions and platforms for

the other pedagogies. This integration of functions was only to be expected in a funda-

mentally teleological philosophical system such as Aristotle’s.

Aristotelian teleology has as its contemporary counterpart recent psychological and

educational theories in which reality, especially moral reality, is understood in devel-

opmental terms. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn that cognitive devel-

opmentalists such as Piaget and Kohlberg sometimes compare Aristotle’s account of

habituation to their own accounts of the early stages of moral competence (see Power et

al., 1989, p. 134). Such comparisons are plausible, but we should not identify Aristotle

too closely with any contemporary psychological theory. His recognition of the import-

ance of external pressures such as discipline, good example, trial and error, and above

all the repetition of good acts is also compatible with the more cognitive approaches of

social learning theory, such as Martin Hoffman’s (2000) “induction,”

which emphas-

izes the role of reason-giving in parent–child relationships, or Walter Mischel’s (1968,

p. 150) “observational learning,” which is mediated by perceptual–cognitive processes.

It is safest to say that Aristotle’s theory of habituation and, for that reason plus others,

his entire ethical theory is underdetermined as far as contemporary moral psychology is

concerned. Even though much of what he says in the Nicomachean Ethics and elsewhere

is clearly incompatible with hard-core behaviorist or associationist approaches to moral

socialization, and even though his account of moral education has important develop-

mental features, it leaves open important questions such as whether the acquisition of

moral habits is best understood in stage-structural terms, according to which the cogni-

tive capabilities discussed above (perception, etc.) either advance in tandem or are clus-

tered in distinct and increasingly complex ways during the child’s developmental career.

Perhaps the best way to characterize Aristotle’s thought in this important area is to say

that it seems to be more a reﬁnement of common sense than deep psychological theory.

That moral virtue is indeed part of the human telos is old news.

BRITISH EMPIRICISM

We now skip over the transformations of Aristotelian teleology wrought by the Roman

Stoics who turned philosophy into a “therapy of desire” (Nussbaum, 1994) and later

by the medieval scholastics who baptized the very idea of goal-seeking and treated it as

Philosophical Moorings s 19

part of the larger story of divine providence and salvation history. We even rush past

the opening century of modernity, when in the 1630s René Descartes rejected the tele-

ological model itself, dismissing it as the keystone of the existing ramshackle ediﬁce of

unwarranted assumptions, beliefs, superstitions, and appeals to tradition. These were all

important phases in the history of philosophy and the formation of our contemporary

views of human nature, but they are not of special relevance to contemporary theories

and practices of moral education or character formation. However, the so-called “empir-

icist” phase that came next was not only relevant but amounted to a radical break with

what was then the established view of human development.

John Locke. And so we come to rest in the following century, and take up the so-called

Father of British Empiricism, John Locke (1632–1704). Uninspired by the worn-out

scholasticism current when he was a student at Oxford, Locke cheerfully embraced Des-

cartes’ repudiation of tradition as the font of wisdom. However, he rejected its accom-

panying theory of innate ideas and other cognitive structures. In this respect Locke and

the empiricists who followed him had the same ambivalence toward Descartes that Aris-

totle had toward Plato’s notion of self-standing ideal forms.

What psychologists now call human development was a relatively unanalyzed notion

in British empiricism. Locke never directly challenged the general Aristotelian model of

human ﬂourishing, which he inherited from scholastic philosophy and the conventional

Christianity of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here as elsewhere, he took a

common sense approach to human nature, as did the philosophers who followed him.

However, he replaced Aristotle’s dynamic notion of human development as the unfolding

of an inner teleology with his own relatively static notion of experience as receptivity to

external perceptions or “inputs.” For instance, Locke believed our moral understanding

is shaped by a combination of natural prosocial “sentiments” and experiences (observa-

tions) of prosocial behavior in others.

Locke’s famous image of the mind was a “blank slate” (tabula rasa). It lies at the heart

of the conception that he and other empiricists such as David Hume and Adam Smith

had regarding what counted for them as human development. The blank slate metaphor

has two parts: (1) there are no innate ideas (certain ideas such as the moral principle of

the Golden rule and principles of identity and contradiction are self-evident, but that

does not make them innate), and (2) experience is the only stylus that can write on

the slate. There were, said Locke, two sources of experience: sensation (which was the

primary source, derived from sensible objects external to the mind), and reﬂection (the

secondary source, entirely internal to the mind). Among the latter are moral ideas, but

Locke left it to his successors to spell out exactly how these ideas emerge.

David Hume. The most important of these successors, especially in matters of moral

psychology, is undoubtedly David Hume (1711–1776). Like Locke he located moral ideas

and their corresponding passions under the category of “ideas of reﬂection” since they

were not immediate perceptions of an external reality. He shared Locke’s belief that their

mutual predecessor Thomas Hobbes had gone too far in his account of psychological

egoism, according to which all action, even moral action, is motivated solely by self-

interest. Their more moderate position was that motives of benevolence as well as self-

interest are operative in human affairs. However, in his Enquiry concerning the Principles

of Morals (1751) Hume went on to argue that the way we actually make moral judgments

is to approve or disapprove certain actions rather than to describe any unique moral

quality they might have. Since as far as he could tell most of the actions we approve of

20 s T. Wren

happen to increase public utility, he concluded that we have a natural tendency (motiva-

tion) to consider and promote the well-being of others. The “calm passion” of benev-

olence combines with “pleasurable impressions” such as knowing one is esteemed by

others, and thereby creates what learning theorists would later call schedules of internal

reinforcement.

In sum, Hume believed that morality is based on affectivity, not rationality, that our

nature includes not only the power to reason but also two types of passion, namely self-

regarding and other-regarding sentiments, and that successful social systems cultivate

both sorts of affectivity. Moral development consists in the cultivation and balance of the

sentiments, but he did not think there is any special cognitive framework within which

this development must take place.

There are several reasons for this absence, but the main one is Hume’s associationist

theory of knowledge in general. Wielding Ockham’s razor, he did away with the assump-

tion that ideas necessarily have a one-for-one correspondence to the components of

external reality. Whatever coherence the world (or the self ) seems to have is, he claimed,

a matter of the simple application to our mental life of three natural laws of association,

namely the laws of resemblance, contiguity, and causality (which is basically contiguity

in time rather than space). Note that what is associated in these laws are not things or

events in the world but introspectible entities, namely ideas, taken in the broad sense as

including the internal contents of all experience.

The educational implications of this skeptical disconnect between the way our ideas

are conﬁgured and the way the external world is conﬁgured are profound, and they are

especially profound in the case of moral education. What is learned are regular relations

between certain kinds of experiences and certain kinds of perception, typically the sen-

timent-laden perception that one is the object of other persons’ approval or the experi-

ence of benevolent feelings. How these relationships are learned varies. Sometime the

learning in question is the simple repetition of a pair of ideas or mental events such as

the smell of cigarette smoke and the pain of a sublethal electric shock, and sometimes it

is a very complicated set of resemblances and correlations such as what the social learn-

ing theorist Albert Bandura has called “observational learning,” which is to say watching

human models. As he explains,

By observing others, one forms rules of behavior, and on future occasions this coded

information serves as a guide for action. . . . Throughout the years, modeling has

always been acknowledged to be one of the most powerful means of transmitting

values, attitudes, and patterns of thought and behavior.

(1986, p. 47)

Absent from this quotation is any hint of why or how the simple experience or set of

experiences of seeing a model perform a certain action leads one to form a rule for that

action. Like Hume, Bandura applied Ockham’s razor to lop off any epistemological

account of the correlation between observation and rule-formation. Although he

prefers to be called a “social cognitive theorist” Bandura’s approach to observational

learning is at bottom as epistemologically barren as Pavlov’s classical conditioning para-

digm or B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism (see Wren, 1991, ch. 3). The same could be

said of any program of moral education that was governed by Hume’s three laws of

association as closely as Bandura was in the passage just quoted.

Philosophical Moorings s 21

KANT

It was perhaps inevitable that Hume’s skepticism about our moral and scientiﬁc know-

ledge of the external world would generate a counter-skepticism about the validity of the

entire empiricist program. However, when the reaction came it was not a return to the

straightforward realism of classical philosophy but rather an entirely new conception of

philosophical inquiry, known from its very beginnings as “transcendental critique.” Its

founder was Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who began his philosophical career in much

the same way that Locke did a century earlier, working within the scholastic dogmatism

that had somehow lingered on during the modern era. This came to an end for Kant

when, in what must have been the philosophical equivalent of a midlife crisis, he read

Hume’s work and, as he later put it, awoke from his dogmatic slumbers.

The rationalists inspired by Descartes and the empiricists inspired by Locke shared

the same goal of explaining how our concepts can match the nature of objects, but Kant

changed the program. Taking what is now called a constructionist approach, he argued

that philosophers must show how the structure of our concepts shapes our experience

of the world. He broke this huge task into two parts. The ﬁrst was to establish the con-

ditions under which (Newtonian) scientiﬁc knowledge—and by extension any experi-

ence whatsoever—is possible, which he did in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1998).

Then, using similar categories and methods of argument, he went on to establish the

conditions of the possibility of any moral experience, ﬁrst in his famous Foundations for

the Metaphysics of Morals (1785/1959) and then in the more formidable Critique of Prac-

tical Reason (1788/1956).

Unlike the empiricists, Kant had a clear and radically new conception of human

development: personal autonomy. Paradoxically, the way one becomes autonomous is by

obeying the law, especially the moral law. But one must obey the law for the right reasons,

which is to say from motives of duty rather than the “inclinations” of self-interest. (Note

that Kant saw nothing intrinsically wrong with acting from inclination, as long as one

does not do so instead of acting from duty. He was, in fact, something of a bon vivant

according to many reports.) Kant unfolded his idea of moral autonomy as follows. Since

a truly good person is one who has internalized and follows the moral law, the core con-

ception of moral agency is not the teleological notion of human ﬂourishing or virtue

but rather the deontological notion (from the Greek word for duty, deon) of following a

self-imposed rule. Simply put, when I act from inclinations—which range from crude

sensual desire to the composite desire for happiness—I am letting my actions be ruled

by something other than my own will. I am properly described as acting under the rule

of something “other,” which Kant called heteronomy of the will. But when I act in accord

with a law that I generate and impose on myself as a rational member of the human com-

munity, I am self-ruled, which is of course the literal meaning of the word autonomy.

Like all legislation, the moral law is formulated as a set of prescriptions, commands, or

imperatives, which Kant divides into sorts: hypothetical and categorical.

“Hypothetical”: As the term suggests, hypothetical imperatives, like hypothetical state-

ments, have an “if-then” structure, linking an antecedent condition and a consequent

action or action-mandate. The action that is the object of the command is considered

good simply because it is a means to achieve an ulterior end or proposition (the ante-

cedent): “If you want y, do x,” or negatively, “Avoid x if you want y.” Seemingly moral

injunctions such as “Keep your promises if you want people to trust you,” and “Don’t

22 s T. Wren

steal if you want to avoid problems with the police,” are hypothetical in form and for that

reason not really part of the moral law.

“Categorical”: In contrast, a truly moral action has neither antecedent nor consequent

components. Its rightness is simply unconditioned, that is, independent of considerations

of external goals or circumstance. There are no “ifs, ands, or buts”: the action is commanded

simply because it is considered to be of value in itself. Thus the general form of a moral

imperative is “Do x” or “Don’t do y”—as in “Keep your promises” and “Don’t steal.”

Of course it is possible to issue obviously nonmoral commands that are categori-

cal in the trivial sense that no antecedent is uttered, as when a parent says, “Wash your

hands before coming to the table.” What makes a truly moral imperative different from

“Keep your promises” is, then, something over and above the simple absence of an ante-

cedent term. This “special something” is, Kant believed, a formal quality of the maxim

underlying the action in question, a point that Kohlberg (1981, p. 135 et passim) later

seized upon in order to differentiate his judgment-oriented approach from the content-

oriented approach typical of character education.

To examine this quality we ﬁrst need to understand Kant’s notion of a maxim or, to

use a phrase common in contemporary analytic philosophy, the relevant act-description.

Kant’s own example is a person who normally tells the truth but is prepared to lie if doing

so is to his or her advantage. Such a person has adopted the maxim “I will lie whenever

doing so is to my advantage,” and is acting on that maxim whenever he or she engages in

lying behavior. Of course many maxims have nothing to do with morality, since they are

purely pragmatic policies such as straightening one’s desk at the end of each workday or

not picking up hitchhikers.

Now we can identify the “special something” that makes a maxim a moral maxim.

For Kant it was the maxim’s universalizability. (Note that universalizability is a funda-

mentally different concept than universality, which refers to the fact that some thing or

concept not only should be found everywhere but actually is. However, the two concepts

sometimes ﬂow into each other: human rights are said to be universal not in the sense

that they are actually conceptualized and respected in all cultures but rather in the sense

that reason requires that they should be. And this is a moral “should.”) However, in the

course of developing this idea, Kant produced several formulations of the Categorical

Imperative, all of which turn on the idea of universalizability. Commentators usually

distinguish the following ﬁve versions:

1. “Act only according to a maximum that at the same time you could will that it should

become a universal law.” In other words, a moral maxim is one that any rationally

consistent human being would want to adopt and see others adopt. The above-

mentioned maxim of lying when doing so is to one’s advantage fails this test, since

if there were a rule that everyone could or even should lie under such circumstances

no one would believe anyone—which of course is utterly incoherent. Making such

a maximum standard practice would destroy the very point of lying.

2. “Act as if the maxim directing your action should be converted, by your will, into a

universal law of nature.” The ﬁrst version showed that immoral maxims are log-

ically incoherent. The phrase “as if ” in this second formulation shows that they

are also untenable on empirical grounds. Quite simply, no one would ever want

to live in a world that was by its very nature populated only by people living

according to immoral maxims.

Philosophical Moorings s 23

3. “Act in a way that treats all humanity, yourself and all others, always as an end,

and never simply as a means.” The point here is that to be moral a maxim must

be oriented toward the preservation, protection, and safeguarding of all human

beings, simply because they are beings which are intrinsically valuable, that is

to say ends in themselves. Of course much cooperative activity involves “using”

others in the weak sense of getting help from them, but moral cooperation

always includes the recognition that those who help us are also persons like

ourselves and not mere tools to be used to further our own ends.

4. “Act in a way that your will can regard itself at the same time as making universal

law through its maxim.” This version is much like the ﬁrst one, but it adds the

important link between morality and personal autonomy: when we act morally

we are actually making the moral law that we follow.

5. “Act as if by means of your maxims, you were always acting as a universal legislator,

in a possible kingdom of ends.” Finally, the maxim must be acceptable as a norm

or law in a possible kingdom of ends. This formulation brings together the

ideas of legislative rationality, universalizability, and autonomy. What Kant had

in mind can be illustrated by imagining an ideal parliament of partisan but

nonetheless civil senators or deputies who have, over and above their personal

feelings, deep-seated respect for each other as legislators, typically accompanied

by courtly rhetoric such as “I would respectfully remind my esteemed colleague

from the great state of ___ that . . .”

Like most philosophers who discuss the way we think about moral issues, Kant took as his

normal case a fully functional adult living in a basically decent environment. But cogni-

tive developmental psychologists who focus on children’s moral reasoning processes have

also worked in the long shadow of Kant ever since Jean Piaget wrote his Moral Judgment

of the Child (1932/1965). This work is now a classic scholarly resource for moral educa-

tional theory. The same can be said of much of the work by Lawrence Kohlberg, whose

ﬁrst publication in 1958 was a doctoral study based on Piaget and whose last publications

appeared posthumously as late as 1990 (Kohlberg, Boyd, & Levine, 1990). In both cases

they charted the development of the child’s ability to make moral judgments about the

rightness or wrongness of speciﬁc (though hypothetical) actions, and in both cases

claimed to discover an ordered set of stages that began with what Kant called heter-

onomous principles of action and ended with autonomous principles.

The logical structures of Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s stages are, of course, well known, but

what is not always clear is the dynamic by which the child moves through the sequence.

Here we ﬁnd no help from Kant, who apparently assumed that a clear-thinking person of

any age would have an intrinsic motivation to think and act autonomously, even though

moral struggle always remained a logical as well as empirical possibility. Surprisingly, one

of the best accounts of our tendency to reason autonomously can be found in Aristotle’s

treatment of collaborative thinking. As we saw above, he posited an innate prosociality (the

human person as zoon politkon) that was realized in the quest for shared goods at various

levels of inclusiveness. Aristotle’s conceptions of human ﬂourishing and moral standards

were typically ethnocentric, but there does seem to be an important afﬁnity between his

idea that people are political animals and Kant’s idea of moral agents as “universal legis-

lators in a possible kingdom of ends.” If so, then the developmental dynamic in question

may be connected in important ways with the Kantian constructionist epistemology that

24 s T. Wren

Piaget and Kohlberg deployed. As they explain in various contexts, children (and adults,

at least in Kohlberg’s scheme) move from one stage to the next because of interactions

that take place between them and other persons: conﬂicting social demands, questions

proposed by others who think differently, responsibilities for distributing resources, and

so on. Toward the end of his career Kohlberg decided that classroom discussions of moral

dilemmas were far less effective as occasions of moral growth than were real-life experi-

ences of decision-making. With this realization came the “just community” approach to

moral education, which in spite of its Kantian conception of moral reasoning seems to

incorporate much of Aristotle’s own understanding of practical wisdom.

However, the deep gap between Aristotle and Kant remains. As we saw above, Aris-

totle believed that practical wisdom, which for him was the supreme moral virtue, is

something quite different from principled reasoning. Whereas Kant thought that we ﬁrst

formulate and adjudicate moral maxims and then apply them to concrete situations,

Aristotle thought that we ﬁrst pick out the goods that are at stake in a given situation,

then work out the best way to balance these goods in a coherent and publicly responsible

way, and then—but only if one is inclined to be a moral philosopher as well as a moral

agent—distill all these considerations into a set of moral principles such as those found

in his discussion of distributive justice in Chapter 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics.

THE AFTERMATH

The history of moral philosophy did not end with Kant, but the parts that have most

inﬂuenced moral educators did, with of course a few exceptions. One of the most

important exceptions is Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), whose conception of the

world, including the human world, as the representation of a cosmic force or “Will”

inﬂuenced Freud and those educators who understand morality primarily in Freudian

categories. However, Freud himself insisted that Schopenhauer’s inﬂuence was incidental

to his own discovery of the unconscious and related primary processes, and it seems safe

to say that whatever Schopenhauer’s inﬂuence on Freud really was, it has had no direct

impact on moral educators in the English-speaking world. Something of the same sort

holds for the moral theories of G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and Nietzsche (1840–1900),

whose inﬂuence on nineteenth and twentieth century ethical philosophy is not matched

by any direct impact their works had on moral education.

Another important exception is John Dewey, who anticipated the cognitive develop-

mental view that human beings advance in their understandings of moral issues in a

progressive way. His application of this general psychological principle to the classroom—

the controversial “progressive education” pedagogy—foreshadowed the just community

approach mentioned a few lines earlier. As Power et al. (1989) once explained, “our basic

expectation, derived from the theories of Dewey and Piaget, was that participation in

the governance of a small school community would stimulate growth of moral reason-

ing more than would participation in the more traditionally governed high schools”

(p. 266).

Philosophers continue to add their voices to the dialogue of moral and character

education, but for the most part they do so by retrieving—or better, refurbishing—

the parts of the philosophical tradition that we have surveyed in this chapter. Among

more recent moral philosophers the ﬁgure of the late John Rawls (1921–2002) towers

over all, but without denying his importance it is clear that much of the power of his

Philosophical Moorings s 25

social contract theory of justice and its consequent importance for moral educators is an

extension of the Kantian approach, as he himself readily acknowledged. Similar retriev-

als have been made by virtue theorists such as Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–) who advocate

a return to the teleological conception of character found in Aristotle, and utilitarian

philosophers such as Richard Brandt (1910–1997), whose contributions to the moral

education debate were drawn from the deep well of Humean empiricism.

The Global Order. As the twentieth century drew to a close, the difference between

virtue-based and principle-based accounts of morality became a philosophical theme in

its own right, articulated in what is often identiﬁed as the liberal-communitarian debate.

Virtue-based accounts portrayed moral agents as motivated by commitments and loyalty

to those with whom they share traditions, nationalities, and other sorts of communal

bonds. Here the historical roots are in Aristotle’s notion of virtue, especially as it oper-

ates in friendship relationships. In contrast, principle-based accounts saw moral agents

as motivated not by communal ties (except incidentally) but rather by a sense of duty

that is grounded in universal and impartial principles of justice preﬁgured by Kant’s Cat-

egorical Imperative. Over the last few decades the debate between virtue-oriented and

duty-oriented moral philosophers has focused on a variety of issues that have their own

educational implications (Wren, 2005). However, since the beginning of the present mil-

lennium many of the virtue vs. duty issues have been absorbed into still more complex

discussions of globalization and its moral implications. In what follows I will quickly

frame those discussions and then indicate their relevance to moral education.

It is sometimes remarked that today’s moral and political discussions of globalization

recapitulate the opposition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism that has been

with us since the days of Hellenistic and Roman Stoics. As an abstract generalization in

the history of ideas this claim is true enough, but it fails to take seriously the fact that

questions about our responsibilities to distant others have a new urgency, thanks largely

to technologies and international structures that have emerged in the wake of coloni-

alism and the cold war. Our general obligation to those in far-off lands is no longer a

second-tier responsibility, to be addressed only after our more important local obliga-

tions have been sorted out and fulﬁlled.

The complex philosophical structure of our moral responsibility to distant others

is part of a still larger evaluative question that already lies at the center of civic educa-

tion and is beginning to show up in the theory and practice of many moral educators:

What are the normative implications of the increasingly powerful forces of globalization?

Any serious answer to that question must recognize that moral educators and philo-

sophers (as well as public policy specialists and hands-on decision-makers who deal

with ethically complex issues of international relations) need a distinctive “ethics in a

world of strangers” (Appiah, 2006). And any answer to that question will also have to go

beyond the now-familiar philosophical distinction between communitarian and liberal

ethical theories. Whatever use that distinction might still have in philosophical accounts

of personal decision-making, it seems to be of little help in designing and morally assess-

ing collective strategies and policies concerning large-scale transnational issues such as

forced industrial development, governmental corruption, or conﬂicts between tribal

practices and democratic institutions.

In short, we need to develop new philosophical and educational approaches that

deal with justice and other moral issues on a global scale. The standard communitarian

approach presupposes existing ties to friends, relatives, and fellow nationals. For that

26 s T. Wren

reason it would be illogical to expect it to provide an ethic for a world of strangers, even

when the concept of community is expanded to include the regional loyalties of, say,

citizens in Latin America or the European Union. Admittedly, not everyone would agree

with this assessment. (The pioneer of globalization studies, Roland Robertson [1938–],

would certainly disagree.) However, the tendency toward boundary maintenance is now

a well-documented characteristic of ethnic and cultural groups (see Barth, 1969), and

so it seems empirically as well as logically wrong to view communitarianism as a self-

standing globalization ethic.

A somewhat different lack of logic undermines the liberal understanding of global

ethics. Philosophers who take that approach to moral questions (e.g., Kant, Mill, Rawls)

tend to treat our relation to distant others as a motivationally barren, purely logical

connection. For instance the only connection that Kant’s Categorical Imperative or the

Golden Rule formally acknowledges between “others” and oneself is a common ration-

ality and vulnerability to fear, pain, and death. Whatever validity or motivating force this

quintessentially liberal notion might have in personal or small group relationships, it

seems clear that in today’s globalized world the relationships and corresponding moral

obligations we have regarding distant others are much more complex, and that this com-

plexity should be recognized by moral educators. For instance, it is plausible that in the

course of our everyday use of the natural resources which multinational corporations

have exploited from developing nations through dishonest “rent transfers” (typically a

euphemism for certain bribes at the highest levels of government) we become accom-

plices to the crimes committed by corrupt governments against their own people. Under

this interpretation (elaborated by Thomas Pogge, 2002), we have a moral obligation to

make restitution, directly or indirectly, to the citizens of that country for the stolen goods

we have purchased from its leaders or corporate accomplices, just as we would have an

obligation to restore a stolen car to its rightful owner even though we had purchased it

unwittingly.

There are many other moral issues generated by globalization that moral educators

could and should address. One of the most frequently discussed of those issues is the

distribution of resources from wealthy to poor nations. Another is the seemingly pater-

nalistic export of participatory democracy and human rights mandates to non-Western

peoples who have other political traditions. National sovereignty is challenged by morally

charged efforts to control emissions on a global scale, and policies regarding immigra-

tion, free speech, and access to education are now seen as human rights issues. Social,

political, and economic problems that used to be local or national issues are now subject

to international assessment, as are their remedies and, by implication, the ethical stand-

ards for those remedies, especially standards couched in the language of human rights. In

a word, civic virtue has taken on a whole new meaning, one that calls for new approaches

to the civic dimension of moral education.

More speciﬁcally, over the last decade or two it has become increasingly clear that civic

virtue should be understood and taught as a special case of moral virtue (see McLaugh-

lin, 1992, and my expansion of his ideas in Wren, 2013). With this new understanding has

come a new emphasis on collective action, since there is little that a single individual can

do to address justice or benevolence issues in far-off lands, in international contexts, or

on any sort of large scale. For this and other reasons voluntary collective action now seems

to be an important aspect of moral education in global contexts. That the global not-for-

proﬁt sector is one of the most effective and accessible ﬁelds for such action is shown by

Philosophical Moorings s 27

the remarkable increase in the number of international NGOs since 1990 as well as by

the explosion of literature devoted to this new version of what the medieval philosopher

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) called “commutative justice,” namely the responses that

individuals and groups should make to the legitimate claims which other individuals and

groups—no matter how distant—have on them (Summa Theologica [1265–1273/1945],

II, II Q61a1; see also Edwards and Gaventa, 2001).

CONCLUSION

So where does this leave us? Good answers to that question are to be found throughout

this book. To return to the “mooring” metaphor that introduced the present chapter, we

should keep in mind that the various assertions, denials, interpretations, and methodol-

ogies offered throughout this volume are not free-ﬂoating intellectual constructions but

rather are moored to long-standing but still-evolving philosophical traditions. However,

they are moored in different ways and tied to different mooring posts, by which I mean

that their underlying assumptions are drawn from signiﬁcantly different philosophical

conceptions of what it means to be—and to develop into—a fully human person. Under-

standing how their respective philosophical infrastructures differ will not resolve the

complex theoretical and practical differences among moral educators, but it will enable

them to take each other’s perspective more thoroughly and, let us hope for the sake of

our children and ourselves, more productively.

NOTES

1. For an example of the “outside view,” consider Robert Dreeben’s (1968) structural functionalist conception

of the school as

an agency of socialization whose task is to effect psychological changes that enable persons to make

transitions among other institutions; that is, to develop capacities necessary for appropriate conduct

in social settings that make different kinds of demands on [students] and pose different kinds of

opportunities. (p. 3)

2. This point has been discussed at length by Ger Snik and other contributors to a volume entitled Philosophy

of Development: Reconstructing the Foundations of Human Development and Education (van Haaften,

Korthals, & Wren, 1997). As Snik explains, “The question is not whether we should use the notion of devel-

opment but only what speciﬁc conception of development is most appropriate in educational contexts”

(Snik, 1997, p. 202).

3. Here as elsewhere it is hard to separate their respective views of the Forms since most of what we know of

Socrates comes from his role in Plato’s dialogues, especially the Phaedo and the Republic. Following the usual

practice in Plato scholarship, I have used the Stephanus method of pagination when referring to speciﬁc

passages in Plato’s works (see Plato, 1997).

4. In the introduction to the ﬁrst volume of his collected writings Kohlberg (1981, p. xxix) presents an eight-point

summary of the elements of Plato’s conception of justice that he incorporated in his own work. His third point

is especially relevant here: “Virtue is knowledge of the good. He who knows the good chooses the good.”

5. Ross’s translation of the Nicomachean Ethics is contained in Aristotle, 1984. A much better overall trans-

lation of the Nicomachean Ethics is the one by C. Rowe, contained in Aristotle, 2002. Note, by the way, that in

my discussion of Aristotle I have followed the usual practice of using line numbers (the Bekker numbers)

rather than page numbers since there are so many different translations of Aristotle’s work.

6. Some philosophers prefer to say the conclusion is not “I should” or any other sort of statement but rather

the decision itself to do Y—or even the act of doing Y.

7. Hoffman deﬁnes this oddly named parenting technique as “the type of discipline . . . in which parents high-

light the other’s perspective, point up the other’s distress, and make it clear that the child’s action caused it”

(2000, p. 143).

28 s T. Wren

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cies (pp. 325–342). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Dialogos Series.

TRADITIONAL CHINESE PHILOSOPHIES AND THEIR

PERSPECTIVES ON MORAL EDUCATION

Guozhen Cen and Jun Yu

There’s a saying in China: “The three teachings of Confucianism, Daoism, and Bud-

dhism are like the legs of a tripod; you cannot lack even one.” Though this was ﬁrst

spoken more than 1,000 years ago, it underscores the importance of these three tradi-

tional philosophies in Chinese culture, even today. Xiao or ﬁlial piety, is one of the most

important Confucian values, and has been used to teach children in East Asia how to

respect and care for their parents and ancestors for thousands of years. The Daoist idea

of “letting things take their own natural course” is still a very popular belief in China.

Meanwhile, the Chinese language itself has more than 500 idioms that reﬂect Buddhist

teachings and principles, such as, “Good deeds create good karma, and bad deeds create

bad karma” (Zhu, 2006).

These three traditional philosophies served as the primary sources for guidance in

China’s moral education until the mid-nineteenth century. Today, the ofﬁcial basis for

moral education in China comes from Communist ideology, though it is clear from the

examples above that Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism still remain inﬂuential to a

certain extent in Chinese society. In this chapter we will introduce these philosophies and

then explore their perspectives on moral education. More speciﬁcally, we will introduce

each major philosophy, the moral values it promotes, the goals of moral cultivation it

sets, and the pathways through which one can reach these goals, as well as major implica-

tions for moral education.

CONFUCIANISM

Brief Introduction to Confucianism

Confucius (551

BC–479 BC) is the founder and the most prominent representative of Con-

fucianism, and his thoughts encompassed morality, education, and politics during the

end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770

BC–476 BC; Cihai Bianji Weiyuanhui, 1990).

This period was a tumultuous time in Chinese history where there were multiple states

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 31

constantly at war with each other in a struggle to gain power over an area that is part

of today’s modern China. This milieu led to a troubling collapse in etiquette and good

manners in society. In an attempt to offer a solution to this crisis in manners, Confucius

developed the philosophy which we today refer to as Confucianism. Confucius’ ideas are

mainly recorded in the Analects. There were eight schools of Confucianism during the

Warring States Period (475

BC–221 BC), with the schools of Mencius and Xunzi as the

most important ones.

Confucianism is a system of thought that is centered around Confucius’ theory of

ren (Tang & Zhang, 1999). For Confucius, the basic meaning of ren is to love people

(“Analects,” n.d.). This encompasses feelings—such as love and empathy—and behavior,

and is primarily focused on interpersonal relationships. In other words, ren is about

how to treat others and how to behave yourself. This idea of loving others inherent in

ren is reﬂected in two different sayings in Confucianism. First, “do not do to others that

which you yourself would not want to be done to you.” Second, “if you want to become

successful yourself, you must ﬁrst help others become successful; and if you want to be

understood by others, you must ﬁrst understand them.” These highlight the selﬂessness,

compassion, and acceptance of others that are at the heart of ren. Confucius proposed

ren as the highest moral ideal and principle for an individual and a society. He advoc-

ated that individuals should aspire to become a person who is ren, while society itself—

including its rulers—should operate in a way that is consistent with the principle of ren.

Through learning and self-cultivation, people can better manage the family, make the

country orderly, and bring peace to the world.

What characteristics does a ren person have? From Confucius’ perspective, such indi-

viduals exercise self-restraint and are courteous. They are humble, benevolent, loyal, and

generous toward others, and hardworking and frugal in their lives. They also live cou-

rageously and are persistent in pursuing their moral ideals. Confucius said that a truly

ren person would be willing to die rather than compromise their ideals and live in a way

that would be inconsistent with being ren. Overall, a ren person could be understood as

possessing perfect goodness and operating in the highest spiritual level in which the will

of the heavens and humanity are united (Feng, 1989).

Confucius’ Perspectives on Moral Education

According to Confucius, everyone is born the same—it is education and self-cultivation

that makes a difference in an individual’s moral character. Confucius believed that educa-

tion should be available to everyone regardless of status which is consistent with his idea

of ren—to love everyone. So he started private education that was open to everyone,

which was revolutionary for his time, when only nobles had access to education. He

maintained that the goal of education—along with self-cultivation—is to help indi-

viduals become ren.

To become ren, one must possess those qualities valued and promoted in Confucian-

ism. The most important of these qualities are li or propriety, xiao or ﬁlial piety, ti or

brotherly love, zhong or loyalty, shu or tolerance, yi or righteousness, zhi or wisdom, and

xin or integrity.

Li or propriety originally referred to ceremonial procedures in life, such as weddings

and funerals. But it also was about the proper etiquette for living, and showing respect

for gods and ancestors. Additionally, li reﬂected the inherent hierarchical structure in

society—where, for example, certain ceremonies were once only reserved for nobles.

32 s G. Cen and J. Yu

In li, people should behave according to the speciﬁc etiquette or procedures in certain

situations and according to their status. For example, you should use the appropriate

title when addressing an individual; when you meet a respected individual, an elder or a

teacher, you should show respect by kneeling or bowing before them; and when you sit

around the table, you should choose your seat according to your status as compared to

your dining companions. In promoting li, Confucius underlined that there were differ-

ences among individuals in terms of a person’s status or age. He considered it important

that people behave in a way that ﬁts their status or age, as this can ultimately promote

harmony within society. When society is harmonious and orderly, it is consistent with

the ideal of ren.

Xiao or ﬁlial piety and ti—love and respect among siblings—can be thought of as

the idea of ren as it applies to families, helping to maintain order and harmony among

family members. Xiao is where an individual shows respect to their family’s elders and

ancestors. Some examples of how one might demonstrate xiao in their family include

taking care of one’s parents in their old age, marrying and having children to carry on

the family lineage, and visiting and worshipping the graves of ancestors on a regular

basis. Similar to li, Confucius also recognized that there are differences among family

members, and these differences are the basis for how children should treat their parents,

grandparents, and ancestors. Ti originally referred to love and respect for one’s elder

brothers, but could be broadly seen as being applicable to relationships between all sib-

lings. Confucius considered xiao and ti the foundation for ren because he believed that

moral behavior started in the family. If people could behave appropriately in their fam-

ilies, then they could expand that moral behavior to society as well.

Zhong refers to loyalty in interpersonal relationships, as well as the idea of fulﬁlling

your duties or responsibilities to your country, work, family, and friends. What behaviors

are consistent with zhong? For example, if someone assigns you a task, you should try

your best to work hard and complete the task. Parents should fulﬁll their responsibility to

properly rear their children, just as teachers should fulﬁll their responsibility to properly

teach students; in both cases, parents and teachers should act as models. Also, students

should study hard, ﬁnish their homework, and learn what is required of them by their

teachers and schools. Zhong is important because, in order to achieve the kind of order

and harmony of a society that embodies ren, you need to be able to trust in others—that

they will do what they are expected to do.

Shu, or tolerance, means to put oneself in another’s place and be able to forgive others.

This idea is embodied in the Confucian saying, “do not do to others that which you

yourself would not want to be done to you.” In other words, you should take others’

perspectives and empathize with them before doing something that might affect them.

According to Confucianism, this kind of tolerance reﬂects the idea of loving others,

which is at the heart of ren. In urging people to think ﬁrst about how their actions could

impact others—including harm to others—shu can help reduce and resolve interper-

sonal conﬂict, helping to create a more harmonious interpersonal environment.

Yi or righteousness broadly refers to morality and justice, but in a more narrow sense

refers to a standard by which one judges what is right and wrong, good and bad. Con-

fucius advocated righteousness for the public and society instead of for individuals. In

other words, he believed that when one is facing a situation where personal interest is at

stake, one should ﬁrst consider its beneﬁt to the greater good. In the end, if the greater

good is more important than personal interest, then one should make the choice for the

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 33

greater good, even if it is harmful to you at an individual level. There is a selﬂessness in

the principle of yi which is consistent with the idea of loving others in ren—in this case,

to the point where others and society matter more than your own interest.

Zhi or wisdom refers to both knowledge and wisdom. Confucius valued education. In

promoting the value of zhi, he wanted people to learn how to differentiate between right

and wrong—and also use this understanding to guide themselves towards proper moral

behavior, instead of merely being controlled by one’s own impulses or desires. In order

to reach this level of understanding, Confucius recommended that people study li or

propriety, know people through what they say, know the limits of one’s knowledge, listen

and read more, and ﬁnd and follow the good in the world. Only through the acquisition

of knowledge and wisdom can one have a proper understanding of Confucian values and

aspire to become someone who is ren.

Xin or integrity refers to honesty and consistency between deeds and words, and prim-

arily is shown through one’s behavior. In other words, you should be sincere to yourself

and towards others; people should be able to trust in your words—that you will do what

you say you’re going to do. If what you do and say is consistent, then others can trust

in you. Likewise, if you can trust in others, this will enhance your relationships. Other-

wise, without trust, people will cheat each other or be suspicious of one another, which

leads to a society that is not prosperous—the opposite of a harmonious and orderly ren

society. Therefore, xin is the foundation for all interpersonal relationships and can help

one become successful.

While all of these values form the basis for becoming an individual who is ren, how

can one achieve this? According to Confucius, ﬁrst you should aspire to become ren. Con-

fucius considered this goal-setting as a primary task in moral education. Once the goal

is clear, you should persistently pursue it. Second, you must then learn more, increasing

your knowledge base. Confucius believed students should study all of the important

major subjects in school; in his time, these were propriety, music, poetry, history, and the

divination classic the Book of Changes. When you study, you must think actively about

what you’re learning—in other words, you should ask questions and think about its

relevance to conduct in the real world. Confucius believed understanding what you’re

studying is good, being interested in what you’re studying is better, and enjoying what

you’re studying is best. He thought it was delightful to review what you have learned

and try your best to practice it in life. Additionally, you should try to put yourself in the

place of others before taking action. Finally, self-reﬂection is necessary in order to know

whether or not your behavior has met the standard of ren. All of the self-improvement

and self-cultivation inherent in becoming ren encourages you try to be a better indi-

vidual than you were before, including expanding your knowledge, mind, heart, and

behavior beyond your previous levels.

Confucius also laid out general developmental stages over the course of an individual’s

lifetime, each marking a certain milestone in terms of their level of understanding and

level of cultivation. By 15 years of age, a person should devote themselves to study. By 30

years of age, a person should understand li or propriety and be able to stand on their own

in society—in other words, hold down a career and successfully manage interpersonal

relationships. By 40 years of age, a person should not be perplexed about the world—

in other words, one should understand how the real world works. By 50 years of age, a

person should understand their destiny—what they were meant to do in life as man-

dated by the heavens. By 60 years of age, a person should be able to understand anything

34 s G. Cen and J. Yu

they hear, and regardless of whether what is said is positive or negative, they should be

cultivated enough to discern any possible wisdom or good points in the conversation.

By 70 years of age, a person should feel free to follow their heart’s desires but also intuit-

ively follow the Confucian principles and not break them. These stages can illustrate the

fact that Confucius considered learning and self-cultivation a lifelong process, one that

requires persistence. It also demonstrates that, for Confucius, it is not enough to simply

understand moral values—you must live them and cultivate yourself, to the point where

your thoughts and behaviors are well-integrated and moral behavior is automatic and

natural to you.

MENCIUS’ AND XUNZI’S PERSPECTIVES ON MORAL EDUCATION

Mencius (372 BC–289 BC) was a famous philosopher in China who was widely regarded as

the successor of Confucius and the most important representative of Confucianism after

Confucius himself. One of Mencius’ contributions is how he expanded the theory of

ren, which is the basis of Confucianism. Originally, Confucius did not explain where ren

comes from or what was the basis for establishing ren as the basic moral principle. Con-

fucius said that everyone is born similar and should aspire to become a person of ren, but

since he considered it a lifelong process—and claimed he never became ren—it seemed

difﬁcult to achieve. Theoretically, Mencius made people more hopeful about becoming

a person of ren by pointing out that everyone has the potential. Mencius thought that

everyone had a basic innate propensity towards becoming ren (“Mengzi,” n.d.). As an

example of this, he mentioned that if people saw a little girl about to fall into a well,

everyone will immediately feel compassion for her. Mencius said that this feeling of com-

passion does not result from a person’s desire to be seen publicly as a good person, but

simply because it is in their human nature to feel this way.

Mencius considered morality as the deﬁning characteristic of humankind. Accord-

ing to Mencius, one cannot be considered human without four propensities. The ﬁrst is

compassion, which is the origin of ren (loving others). The second is a sense of shame

towards yourself and a dislike of others’ wrongdoing, which is the origin of yi (righteous-

ness). The third is to give others precedence out of courtesy and respect, which is the

origin of li (propriety). The fourth is a sense of right and wrong, which is the origin of

zhi (wisdom). Mencius believed that people are predisposed to have these four propensi-

ties. And these propensities need to be developed into the four corresponding moralities

of ren, yi, li, and zhi.

Despite the fact that he believed people are inherently good, he thought that this could

be inﬂuenced by a person’s environment—that in a bad environment, goodness can be

lost. So he advocated taking active steps to prevent this from happening. Mencius recom-

mended reducing your own desires—as he believed that the more desire you have, the

less you will have of the four propensities. He thought that one way to reduce desire was

to place yourself in a situation of hardship. He also recommended self-reﬂection, where

you should reﬂect on yourself and try to ﬁnd fault in yourself. Mencius also advocated

being determined not to change your mind because of personal interest but instead

to show determination and courage in life. Eventually, one can become an upstanding

individual who would not sacriﬁce one’s own mores for promises of wealth and fame,

or be subdued by power in situations where one is asked to do something immoral

(Jin, 1995).

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 35

Xunzi (about 313 BC–230 BC) was a respected Confucian philosopher at the end of the

Warring States Period. Counter to Mencius’ view, Xunzi believed people were innately

evil and goodness was learned (“Xunzi,” n.d.). In his mind, to be considered innately good

you needed to be born that way, instead of learning to be a good person. Xunzi believed

people are born with needs, desires, and tendencies such as seeking food when hungry

and seeking to rest when tired. If the inborn tendencies develop without limits, they will

lead to bad consequences, especially to society. To illustrate his point, Xunzi provided the

example that people are born with a fondness for their own self-interests. Uncontrolled

development of this tendency will lead to conﬂict, ﬁghting, and a diminished considera-

tion for others. Then the society would be in disorder and people would be poor. Xunzi

considered human beings evil in the sense that uncontrolled natural desires will lead to

evilness, but desire itself is not evil.

Xunzi believed that the inherent evil in human nature can be changed for the better

through education and proper laws and regulations (Zhang, 1995). Education was

important to him because he believed people needed to be taught propriety, or li, since

people are not inherently good. But because not everyone could become good through

education, proper laws and regulations are needed to determine what is not proper

behavior, and to punish people for it.

Xunzi established li or propriety as the foundation for moral education. He believed

propriety is a precondition not only for an individual’s growth but also for achieving

success and societal peace, and he emphasized that propriety was the standard and norm

for behaving and managing life. Therefore, for Xunzi, an important task of moral learn-

ing is to fully understand propriety.

Xunzi believed the goal of moral education was to cultivate good character. He posited

that people could aspire to three different levels of cultivation. For shi, or scholars, people

cultivate moral character at the most basic level, upholding humaneness and abiding by

propriety. Scholars have the most ordinary moral character. Junzi, or gentlemen, possess

a strong will and have practiced self-cultivation more persistently than scholars; one’s

speech and conduct are always consistent with the ethical moral principles and free from

external constraints such as wealth or desire. The gentleman has a more lofty moral

character than the scholar. Shengren, or sage, is the highest state of moral cultivation;

there is nothing the sage does not understand, suggesting a kind of moral perfection or

ideal. Since Xunzi considered people innately evil, we can view these levels on a spectrum

where evil is at one end and then, through education and cultivation, one can move away

from evil and towards goodness—ﬁrst to the ordinary scholar, then the lofty gentleman,

and ﬁnally the ideal sage. Though he differentiated the levels of cultivation in a concep-

tual sense, this is nevertheless informative because it provides some basic guidance on

the stages one might go through to become a sage.

In summary, the heart of Confucianism is the idea of ren, or loving others. Confu-

cianism is mainly concerned with morality in interpersonal relationships and behav-

ior, and identiﬁes values that cover a wide range of relationships and behaviors—ren

(loving others), li (propriety), xiao (ﬁlial piety), ti (love and respect among siblings),

zhong (loyalty), shu (tolerance), yi (righteousness), zhi (wisdom), and xin (integrity).

The goal of moral education in Confucianism is to cultivate oneself into someone who

is ren—courteous, courageous, selﬂess, and loving towards other people. Mencius and

Xunzi both expanded our understanding of Confucianism. In seeing people as innately

good, Mencius underlined the great moral potential for humans to be better individuals.

36 s G. Cen and J. Yu

Xunzi, however, saw people as innately evil and therefore brought up the necessity for

punishment and formal education for guidance. Overall, Confucianism stands out as

one of the world’s earliest forms of moral and character education.

DAOISM

Brief Introduction to Daoism

Daoism was established at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (770

BC–476 BC) by

its founder Laozi. Like Confucius, Laozi was also troubled by the tumultuous state of

the Spring and Autumn Period, with frequent wars, and offered Daoism as a means for

people to return to a state of peace and harmony in the world.

Daoism is centered around the Dao, meaning “The Way” (Cihai Bianji Weiyuanhui,

1990). The Dao is the ultimate origin and nature of all things, including heaven, earth,

and the entire universe (“Daodejing,” n.d.). In Daoism, the Dao is also the principle for

how the world works.

Before Laozi, people thought of heaven as the origin of everything and did not con-

sider if there was something that actually created heaven itself (Wang, 1999). Laozi started

inquiring into the origins of heaven and later proposed that the Dao was the origin of

everything in the universe.

From Laozi’s perspective, the Dao follows its own course; the universe follows the

Dao; the Earth follows the universe; human beings follow the Earth. In other words, the

entire world as we know it follows the Dao, which in another sense is responsible for

creating what we often refer to as the laws of nature. These laws affect everything from

the changing seasons to the change from night to day to how animals live and even how

water ﬂows from mountains to the ocean. Laozi proposed that people should learn the

ways of the natural world, and then live their lives in harmony with it.

According to Daoism, the world is made up of opposites—such as night and day, life

and death, strength and weakness—referred to as yinyang or yin and yang. These oppos-

ites depend on each other and complement one another, as there cannot be day without

night or strength without weakness. They can even transform into each other over time,

such as how day eventually becomes night or how living things eventually die. If one

anticipates such changes and stays focused even in the face of the inevitable changes

inherent in life such as aging, one can make the most of every moment and live one’s life

to the fullest. However, when one deviates from what is considered natural and normal,

it will cause a reversion to the opposite and a state that is not natural—for example,

exhausting yourself while young will lead to being prematurely old.

While Laozi was the founder of Daoism, Zhuangzi (369

BC–286 BC) carried on and

developed Laozi’s thoughts. Rulers at the beginning of the Han Dynasty (206

BC–AD 220)

espoused Daoism as their guiding philosophy. After Emperor Han Wudi of the Han

Dynasty promoted Confucianism as the orthodox state ideology, Daoism lost its ofﬁcial

status. Although Daoism was not adopted by the government, it played an important

role in the development of ancient Chinese thought. For example, Confucianism during

the Wei and Jin period (

AD 220–420) and the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279) adopted some

ideas from Daoism. After Buddhism was introduced to China, scholars applied Laozi’s

and Zhuangzi’s thoughts to interpret Buddhist concepts. Daoism is an important part of

Chinese culture and has strongly inﬂuenced multiple aspects such as ethics, medicine,

politics, technology, and art.

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 37

The Daoist Perspective on Moral Education

In Daoism, to be moral you should live your life in accordance with the Dao. Daoism

suggests that people let go of the knowledge, prejudices, habits, desires, and ego that have

distracted them from their own true nature and the true nature of the world around

them, and to develop an inner awareness towards the world and oneself.

Daoism considered that being moral is being natural, so naturalness—that things are

best in their natural state—is the highest Daoist moral principle. This is symbolized by

the idea of pu, the unworked or uncarved wood. Such a piece of simple and untouched

wood is in its pristine state, like a newborn baby, and stands as an example of the original

simplicity that Daoists aspire to. In the natural state, a person’s mind is calm and still; like

a mirror, the mind can reﬂect the world without prejudice. Reaching such a state of mind

requires a person to ﬁrst look beyond the kind of knowledge they have acquired through

formal education, as such knowledge has from the Daoist perspective distracted people

from their natural state. Instead, they should try to see the world more like a newborn

infant, which has an inclusive and pristine state of mind and welcomes the entire range

of experiences in life without discrimination, judgment, or preconceived notions. To

return to the natural state, you should also reduce concern for yourself and reduce your

own wants—a kind of simplicity of desire that falls within the Daoist concept of frugal-

ity. At the same time, you should live frugally in the sense of economizing your life and

not caring about wealth or fame.

Daoism also emphasizes the idea of wuwei, effortless action or action without action.

This is best symbolized by water. When water ﬂows around rocks, it does not force its

way through a rock, but naturally ﬁnds its way around it via the path of least resistance,

the path that does not require forcing or straining. Water is also soft to the touch and lays

as low as possible to the ground, not seeking to be higher than it needs to be. It is selﬂess

in that it provides nourishment to the earth to help other things grow. Therefore, people

should aspire to be like water and live in a way that is accommodating, compassionate,

selﬂess, and humble, a way that does not interfere with or meddle with how things nat-

urally are in the world. A philosophical basis for wuwei comes from the proposition that

the world is made of correlates such as day and night, or young and old. These correlates

complement each other and can even naturally transform into each other the way day

effortlessly transforms into night or how people effortlessly age. This seamless transition

from one correlate to another exempliﬁes wuwei, showing how changes can happen nat-

urally without interference from anything or anyone.

To be consistent with wuwei, a person needs to exemplify the Daoist ideas of compas-

sion and humility. The Daoist view of compassion is about being loving and accommod-

ating. As we discussed above in deﬁning the idea of naturalness, it is important that a

person is unencumbered by their past knowledge, habits, and prejudices when they face

the world, and this is also true in the case of exemplifying Daoist compassion. Our pre-

conceived or taught ideas can cause us to behave in ways that are forced or taught, which

may not be natural or in line with the idea of wuwei. When we are no longer burdened

by such ideas, which might otherwise prejudice us against others (such as thinking of

criminals as bad people and thus wanting to treat them badly), we are more able to love

and accept everyone, even people who are bad or who we were taught not to care about.

For example, a ruler with compassion would make sure to ﬁnd a place within their com-

munity for every single person, even the clumsiest individuals, the criminals, or those

38 s G. Cen and J. Yu

without great talents. And as water nourishes all things without demanding rewards, so

people should endeavor to help others in a selﬂess way.

The Daoist idea of humility is that when people have too much of an ego, it can have

a coercive or interfering effect in the world. For example, during the Spring and Autumn

period when Laozi conceived of Daoism, China was made up of states that were constantly

at war because each of them wanted to be the one state that ruled all of China. This desire

for power, where war happened frequently, led to instability in society and the suffering of

common people. This kind of result, which is arguably coercive by forcing common people

to live in a constant state of war and also interfering in the sense that it interfered with

common people’s ability to live peacefully, is not consistent with wuwei. Therefore, Daoism

recommends that people should not strive to be ﬁrst or to be ahead in the world, and instead

aim for a humble life—like water, which always ﬂows downward and lays as low as possible.

The ideal character that Daoists promote is the perfected individual or zhenren

(“Zhuangzi,” n.d.). The zhenren has returned to their natural state, which allows them

to be tranquil and at peace, experiencing every moment without preconceptions. They

exemplify frugality, where they lessen their own desires and concern for themselves such

that they live a simple and economical life and do not care about money or status. They

are like water—showing compassion by being loving and accommodating towards others

and the world around them; humble and without ego, preferring to lay as low as possible

instead of ﬁghting to be at the top.

While Daoism does not describe a developmental pathway to becoming a zhenren, it

does advocate a number of approaches for moral cultivation (Ruo, 1999). First, a person

must forget everything that is not naturally a part of their own body and mind. Not

just the knowledge, prejudices, habits, and anything else that gives them preconceived

notions about the world, but also material goods and wealth. Essentially, anything that

is man-made should be forgotten or detached from the self. All of these things will tire

or worry a person more than is necessary. Forget ego and selﬁsh concerns. Do not seek

fame, fortune, or to be ahead of others—do not think about personal gain, in other

words. Instead learn to ﬁnd happiness in simplicity in terms of yourself and your life.

After an individual is freed of everything outside of the self as well as ego and selﬁsh

concerns, they can become like a blank sheet and face the world like a newborn baby,

experiencing it for the ﬁrst time. In this state, a person has a spacious, open heart that

allows them to tolerate and accept anything that happens to them.

In summary, Daoism is a philosophy based on the idea of the Dao, or the Way, which is

considered the origin of all things in the universe and the basis for the laws of nature and

the universe. In Daoism, to be moral one must be natural, which is why naturalness—the

idea that things are best in their natural or original state—is the highest moral principle.

Daoism promotes frugality in the sense that you should reduce your ego and desires, and

live an economical life without striving for wealth or fame. The Daoist principle of wuwei—

or effortless action—urges people to behave in a natural way that does not interfere, force

things, or meddle in any way. The philosophical basis of wuwei comes from the proposi-

tion that the world is made of correlates—such as day and night, young and old—which

can transform into one another effortlessly. In a moral sense, the idea of wuwei promotes

being compassionate—as in, a person who is accommodating and loving towards others—

and also being humble—as in, selﬂess and not striving to be ahead or on top. All of these

qualities—naturalness, frugality, compassion, and humility—are reﬂected in the zhenren,

or perfected individual, which is what Daoists aspire to become.

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 39

BUDDHISM

Brief Introduction to Buddhism

Buddhism was said to be established by Sakyamuni, a prince in ancient India during

about 600

BC or mid-500 BC. There is no exact consensus as to when Buddhism was intro-

duced to China, but it happened at some time between 2

BC and AD 67. Over time, many

schools of Buddhism emerged in China, such as the Discipline School and the Pure Land

School, and Buddhism became an important part of Chinese culture (Nan, 1996). The

most well-known of those schools, the Chan or Zen School, is seen as a popularized form

of Daoism (Ma, 1997). The distinct features of Buddhism in China include simplicity in

practice, using the mind as the path to nirvana, becoming a Buddha by gaining sudden

insight, and borrowing elements from Confucianism and Daoism into their practice

such as ﬁlial piety and naturalness (Hong, 2001).

This chapter is focused primarily on introducing Buddhism as it is known in China—

not Buddhism as a whole—and discussing its perspectives on moral education. Though

Buddhism in China developed its own unique characteristics, it has still retained the ori-

ginal spirit of Buddhism: its emphasis on karma, and the ultimate goal of reaching nir-

vana—a state of ultimate happiness where one is ﬁnally free of suffering—and becoming

a Buddha.

Karma refers to any movement or activity which leads to some effect in the world. The

idea that goodness brings good karma and evilness brings bad karma is the most typical

representation of karma in daily life, and demonstrates the cause-and-effect relation

of one’s actions to later consequences. Therefore Buddhists aim to make sure that they

promote good karma in the world. But to do so, a person must consider not only their

behavior but also their mind, as negative thoughts can also lead to bad karma. In the

Buddhist path of cultivation, cultivating the mind is the key and a basis for cultivating

behavior—ultimately, so that the mind and behavior are consistent.

The Four Noble Truths, which are the Buddha’s original teachings, encapsulate the

basic tenets of Buddhism (Cihai Bianji Weiyuanhui, 1990). Suffering is the First Noble

Truth. While the Buddha described birth, decay, death, and not getting what one wants

as the main sufferings in the world, suffering can be seen as primarily originating from

the body and the mind. The Second Noble Truth is cause—in other words, the cause

of suffering. The Buddha considered desire and ignorance the primary reasons that led

to suffering. End is the Third Noble Truth—as in, the end of suffering. This is known

as nirvana, the enlightened state where one is free from suffering; nirvana can only be

reached after removing the causes of one’s suffering. Finally, the Fourth Noble Truth of

the path points to how one can reach a state of enlightenment, which is detailed in the

Eight Noble Paths.

In the Eight Noble Paths, the Buddha laid out a way to end all suffering which covers

moral conduct, concentration, and wisdom (Cihai Bianji Weiyuanhui, 1990). The ﬁrst

is Right View, which means one has an understanding of the nature of reality and also

the path towards transformation. Right Thought, the second, refers to right intention

without thoughts of greed and anger. Then there is Right Speech, where one inhibits

any harmful communication and instead aims to speak in a way that is truthful, kind,

and useful. In Right Conduct, a person’s actions should never harm others. Right Liveli-

hood refers to the fact that people should earn a living in a way that is not exploitative or

harmful. People also need to constantly and persistently direct their energies towards the

40 s G. Cen and J. Yu

pathway to enlightenment, which is Right Diligence. In Right Mindfulness, a person has

an awareness of how things really are in the world and within oneself, without deviant

thoughts. Finally, one reaches Right Concentration, where one is not only able to fully

concentrate their mind but also has forgotten the self. Buddhists believe an ordinary

person can become noble and reach nirvana by successively cultivating oneself through

the Eight Noble Paths.

Buddhist Perspectives on Moral Education

In Buddhism, the goal of moral education is to reach nirvana. Nirvana is not just a state

where a person is free of suffering; in nirvana, a person is selﬂess or freed from the idea of

self. Self is merely a concept created by humans, and self leads to all problems. Because of

this false idea of self, people have desires for the self—such as a desire for material goods

or a desire to be ahead of others—and desires can lead to suffering. Ultimately, self is

not the nature of reality; in actuality, everyone has a true self within them, the Buddha

nature. In order to reach nirvana, people need to see through the pretense of self to their

Buddha nature, forgetting the idea of self in the process.

Buddhists believe everything, especially humans, possesses Buddha nature. Buddha

nature is the ability to gain understanding and be enlightened. Of course, human intel-

ligence and reﬂection could be compromised or blocked for various reasons such as sub-

jective prejudices or stubbornness. The difference between a Buddha and the ordinary

individual is that one is in an “awakening” state and the other is in a “lost” state. Similarly,

educators should believe everyone has the capacity to become a moral person. A task of

moral education is to eliminate prejudices or stubbornness and guide individuals out of

the “lost” state and into the “awakening” state (Li, 2006).

Because everyone has Buddha nature within them, and therefore has the potential to

become enlightened, there is innate goodness in everyone. This is the basis for the prin-

ciples of loving-kindness and compassion—that if everyone has inherent goodness, then

we should treat them well and as equals. That means behaving towards everyone with

the same kindness and compassion, regardless of whether they are friends or enemies.

Loving-kindness and compassion are fundamental requirements for self-cultivation,

because through them one can create good karma and remove suffering in the world.

Arguably, karma motivates people to do good in the world, since their actions can affect

future consequences for oneself and for others.

In the same vein, Buddhism also gives followers the Five Basic Precepts—namely, no

harming of living beings, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no false speech, and no

drinking of alcohol—as a reminder to avoid doing bad, which would lead to bad karma

and increase suffering in the world.

Precepts, such as the Five Basic Precepts which exemplify moral conduct, are also

considered one of the Three Learnings. The Three Learnings—precepts, concentration,

and wisdom—summarize the main methods of cultivation laid out in the Eight Noble

Paths. Concentration in this case refers to a state free from external stimuli and internal

thoughts or feelings. If a person’s mind always changes based on the environment around

them, this can lead to negative feelings such as worries, sadness, or anger. At the same

time, memories and deviant thoughts can distract a person from the present moment.

When one is completely focused on the current moment, this also can lead to another

level. In this level, the mind and body become united, and the boundaries between the

self and the external environment become blurred such that the whole universe becomes

Chinese Philosophies and Moral Education s 41

a part of what one usually considers “self.” Only when one reaches this level of unity can

it be called concentration in the Buddhist sense.

Wisdom is about ridding oneself of suffering. If a person does good but was not

rewarded for their good deeds—and subsequently suffers or feels frustrated as a result of

not being rewarded—that is not real wisdom. Real wisdom happens at a no-self level. At

this level, people do good but not because they hope for some kind of reward; they also

are not troubled if other people treat them badly even for their good actions. If a person’s

wisdom has this selﬂess quality, then they can equally love all people and be liberated

from suffering. To cultivate wisdom, one must read and understand Buddhist sutras and

gain experience through practicing the Buddhist principles in daily life. Over time, as a

person becomes more cultivated and closer to reaching the goal of nirvana, these teach-

ings and principles will be automatically be integrated into their behavior, such that they

no longer need to look for inconsistencies in behavior.

As a summary of the Eight Noble Paths, the Three Learnings can be divided into three

different levels—with precepts as the basic level, concentration as the intermediate level,

and wisdom as the most advanced level. People who wish to cultivate themselves must

ﬁrst master the precepts, then moving on to concentration and, later, mastering wisdom.

Once one reaches a state of enlightenment, with a cultivated mind, everything in daily

life—even the most mundane experiences, such as drinking tea or brushing your teeth—

can be considered as opportunities for cultivating morality (Foguang Xingyun, 2008).

In summary, Buddhism is a philosophy whose main points are encapsulated in the

Four Noble Truths—which state that there is suffering in the world, that suffering has a

cause, there is an end to suffering (nirvana), and there are paths to that end. The Eight

Paths describe the pathway through which a person can reach the state of nirvana, where

they no longer suffer, and these paths cover the areas of moral conduct, concentration,

and wisdom. Reaching a state of nirvana is the goal of moral education in Buddhism,

and by reaching this state one can forget the self and discover their true self within, the

Buddha nature, which is also considered an awakened state. Since everyone has Buddha

nature in them and is therefore inherently good, Buddhism encourages people to treat

others with loving-kindness and compassion. Such good behavior is also important

because it creates good karma, which will lead to good outcomes for the individual.

Besides karma, the Five Basic Precepts—which cover moral conduct—encourage people

to behave in a moral way. Through good moral conduct, intense concentration that

makes one forget the self, and selﬂess wisdom—the Three Learnings—one can eventu-

ally reach an enlightened state.

CONCLUSION

Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism are three major thoughts in traditional Chinese

culture that dominated education including moral education in China. Confucianism

and Daoism ﬁrst developed locally and Buddhism developed after its introduction from

abroad. During over 2,000 years of history, these three traditional teachings expanded

into various schools that have had enormous inﬂuence in Chinese society and daily life.

Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism all care about humanity, but each has a dif-

ferent emphasis. Confucianism emphasizes being involved in the world so that individuals

can better promote societal development. Daoism emphasizes forgetting the world,

so that individuals can become free from external limitations. Buddhism emphasizes

42 s G. Cen and J. Yu

transcending the world, which means to pursue inward happiness. The different empha-

ses and applications of the three traditional Chinese thoughts are represented in the

Chinese saying, “Govern the society with Confucianism, manage life with Daoism, and

manage the mind with Buddhism.”

In terms of morality, Confucianism emphasizes interpersonal relations, becoming a

person of ren who loves people, has talents, and cares about the society. Daoism advoc-

ates that one should become a perfect person who follows the nature, lives in accordance

with wuwei, and leads a simple life that is free from troubles of fame and wealth. Bud-

dhism emphasizes that one should cultivate the self to reach a state of nirvana, and that

everyone is equal and subject to the cause-and-effect law of karma that motivates people

to do good in their lives. Overall, these three philosophies could be valuable resources for

moral education in terms of nurturing humanity in modern societies, and could offer

inspiration to those individuals seeking alternatives to Western approaches.

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TRADITIONAL APPROACHES TO CHARACTER EDUCATION

IN BRITAIN AND AMERICA

James Arthur

The formation of character could be said to be the aim that all general education has his-

torically set out to achieve. It is an aim that has often not been explicitly stated, instead it

has simply been assumed. Most traditional approaches to character education emphasize

the role of habit, imitation, modeling, instruction, rewards and punishments, and

authority in the formation of character and regularly invoke Aristotelian ethics in jus-

tiﬁcation. Some of these educational approaches have been interpreted as both coercive

and teacher-centered and are seen in sharp contrast to the advocates of child-centered

approaches based on moral developmental research which is characterized by a belief

in the child’s ability to gradually bring their “behaviour under the explicit guidance of

rational deliberation” (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005, p. 141).

Therefore, to enter on a discus-

sion about character and, even more, about character education is to enter a mineﬁeld of

conﬂicting deﬁnition and ideology. It is an educational theme about which there is much

fundamental disagreement and division. The disagreement is about whether traditional

character education is a legitimate aim of schooling. Can there be said to exist such a

thing as a regular and ﬁxed set of habitual actions in a person that constitutes his or her

character? In order to begin an answer to this question we must start with the early Greek

and Christian ideas of character.

GREEK ORIGINS

Character education is ultimately about what kind of person a child will grow up to

be and the early Greek idea of character suggests that moral goodness is essentially a

prediction of persons and not acts. It also implies that this goodness of persons is not

automatic, but must be acquired and cultivated. Character education is inherently a

multi-disciplinary endeavor, which requires its adherents and critics to ask divergent

questions and employ disparate methods in approaching the subject. Plato’s Republic

was the ﬁrst major work on the philosophy of education which argued that to have or to

44 s J. Arthur

form a good character is also to become fully human. Both the Republic and Aristotle’s

Ethics concern themselves with the question of how a good person should live.

They are

also about how society should structure itself to make this type of life attainable.

In modern discussions about moral character most writers tend to cast the respective

views of Plato and Aristotle as polar opposites. They argue that, in Plato’s case, a truly good

character will be one that understands the good and therefore does what is good. Plato held

that a person who knows what is good will therefore do it. He did not think that anyone

willingly acted immorally, and explained that if they did so act then it could only be through

ignorance of the good. In contrast, Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, took a different view. Where

Plato had taught that a prior intellectual understanding of the good alone makes moral

excellence attainable, Aristotle argued rather that a person becomes good by learning ﬁrst

what it is to do good. He also recognized, in contrast to Plato, that a person may have the

ability to think about the good without having the disposition to implement it.

Aristotle says we become good by practising good actions. From Plato there is the idea

that moral education is about improving thinking skills, whilst in Aristotle it is primarily

about practising right behavior. In one there is an emphasis on moral reasoning without

moral action, in the other, conformity without inner conviction. This is to overstate their

differences. Both believed that character must be actively cultivated in the young. Both

were concerned about whether ethical behavior could be taught. They debated mainly

in terms of virtue and the virtuous, and morality for them was not about rules or prin-

ciples, but the cultivation of character. Conformity to a set of moral rules was not their

aim in the development of this character, but rather character development involved

being a certain kind of person and not merely doing certain kinds of things.

In Aristotle’s writings, right moral conduct was not a matter for explicit teaching in

terms of a subject on the school curriculum, although he did recommend mentors who

guide the individual until he or she is able to cultivate his or her own virtues. Aristo-

tle believed that there is rationality in every moral choice and this cannot be omitted

from the process through which virtue is formed. The focus is not on the formation

of prescribed habits, but rather on the intentions of the child. Habits are not simply

passively learnt through repetition of behavior, but contain a cognitive element—they

presuppose a capacity for decision-making and are done for the right reason in the right

place. Whilst children must eventually decide voluntarily how to act in a certain way, this

behavior is achieved gradually as they become more autonomous and make their own

decisions. According to Aristotle, virtues are developed by an individual over time and

signify a speciﬁc excellence in them of some kind. He recognized that a person may have

the ability to think about the good without having the disposition to implement it. This

Aristotelian notion of education is also about setting someone free, whilst demonstrat-

ing a consistent pattern of behavior.

Aristotle gave more speciﬁc attention to the process of education than did Plato. He

suggested that there are clear developmental stages in education. The ﬁrst stage is the

training of the body; the second is the training of character; and lastly comes the train-

ing of the intellect. He observed that intellect appears later in the child. Only after they

have built certain good habits within the second stage can children reasonably move to

the stage of comprehension. There is a paradox here: students who already have virtuous

characters through their actions are to be taught how to think about moral decisions.

And yet Aristotle says that unless you already have skills to think correctly about moral

decisions then you cannot be virtuous.

Character Education in Britain and America s 45

CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENTS

Greek Patristic thought aimed at the formation of the anima Christiana, the Chris-

tian, and the child was to be formed after the likeness of Christ—Christ-loving or

Christ-minded. This language articulated a unique kind of pedagogy and it is clear

that these early Christians would have thought in terms of paideia which is a much

broader meaning than the word moral. Paideia is a word that has been lost to modern

educational discourse. Paideia is the total development of the human person: body,

mind, heart, will, senses, passions, judgments, instincts, aimed at what the Greeks

called arête, excellence in living. Early Greek Christians believed that morality cannot

simply be taught as part of schooling: moral character was seen as a ﬁrm disposi-

tion for the good, for moral excellence, for all that is best in human existence and

required the educative force of a Christian community for these things to ﬂourish.

This was understood from within the Christian faith which taught that moral char-

acter is rooted in intellectual insight and rational judgment and is the outcome of

deliberate choice. The early Christians clearly built upon the classical understandings

of character.

Much later Aquinas laid great emphasis upon the importance of using reason to

make moral choices. Aristotle had taught that becoming virtuous involved using one’s

powers of reasoning to shape virtues that are innate in each individual and that it was

this inherent condition or potential that produced a natural impulse to desire the good

(see Porter, 1990). Aquinas combined this natural impulse with the power of rational

thought and claimed that together they allow human beings to reach an understand-

ing of what is morally right. In other words, Aquinas develops a more sophisticated

sense of the natural law which he says allows us to grasp God’s moral laws through

our own reasoning powers. In regard to moral character Aquinas insisted upon the

relation between reason and faith as the one sustained the other (Summa Theologiae

1a 2ae.94.2). Aquinas does not advocate the pursuance of mechanical actions without

reﬂection as he emphasizes again and again that virtuous actions must be the product

of liberty.

For the Christian, character formation is not independent of religious faith. Both

reason and revelation are required for ethical decisions and actions. The task of

Christian ethics is to discover what God is enabling and requiring Christians to be

and do. Christianity places a high value on altruism and self-sacriﬁce, but does not

see character education as being an end in itself. Christianity is embedded in all kinds

of inclinations, feelings, attitudes, interests, habits, lifestyles, decision patterns, and

actions. It is based on a teleological concept of the good life that is contained in

the Christian revelation and tradition. Two approaches to character education can

be discerned from Christian tradition. First, some Christians want to move deduc-

tively from scripture and/or doctrine to contemporary moral issues. Second, others

wish to work inductively from contemporary empirical data back to scriptural and/

or doctrinal afﬁrmations. In practice, many Christians, especially evangelical Protest-

ants, adopted wholly negative views of the child which assumed that a child was born

corrupt and evil and that it was the task of education to rectify this through punish-

ment and training in obedience. An obvious weakness of contemporary Christian

approaches to character is that they are often abstract and say little to teachers about

the pedagogical practices of character formation.

46 s J. Arthur

SECULAR INSIGHTS AND NINETEENTH CENTURY EXPERIMENTS

The period of the Enlightenment brought some secular insights into what character

was understood to be. Whilst it is accepted that Enlightenment philosophy was not

directly connected to traditional forms of character education, a number of philo-

sophers addressed the issue. James Barclay, for instance, urged that teachers should only

be selected for the role if they had strong characters as he considered that the example

set by them was crucial. As he said: “Example is allowed to be stronger than precept,

and children especially are much readier to copy what they see than what they hear”

(Hutchison, 1976, pp. 233f.). Another Scot, David Fordyce, spoke of developing the

child’s imagination in moral matters and wrote that “dull, formal lectures on several

virtues and vices” were of no use in the formation of good character. Francis Hutcheson,

professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow in 1747, advocated greater

study of character. He sought to “search accurately into the constitution of our nature

to see what sort of creatures we are” (Hutchison, 1976, pp. 233f.). What was needed,

he argued, was an objective study of human nature, particularly motives and behavior.

John Locke also believed that character formation was more important than intellectual

attainment. There was also a sustained attack on the relation between religion and char-

acter during the Enlightenment. In the writings of David Hume and Jeremy Bentham we

see how, in their view, the concept of the divine was superﬂuous to any thesis of morality.

Education was about knowledge and was considered value-free whilst religion was about

dogma and was value-laden.

English Victorian education had conscious moral purposes, particularly in the eco-

nomic and religious domain. Indeed, there are clear similarities between the views

contained in Plato’s Republic and Victorian character education. The production of char-

acters suited to the needs of work was one of the principal goals of nineteenth century

elementary schools for the poor. Children in these schools were taught the “habits of

industry” (Barnard, 1966, p. 6) for they were destined for either the factories or domestic

service. Character training formed the core of their schooling and included a form of

moral development ﬁrmly based on the Ten Commandments and stories from the Bible.

The teacher’s role in these schools was to inculcate speciﬁc social roles typiﬁed by a

pattern of behavior in children. Children accepted without question the moral training

provided and expected to be punished for bad habits. The emphasis was on obedience

and duty to all forms of authority in society and absolute conformity to predetermined

social roles for the child. The teachers themselves were often not well educated and were

selected for their ability to exhibit virtues in and outside of school. They held a restricted

outlook on educational matters, which resulted in crude and mechanistic methods of

teaching (see Arthur, 2003).

Society in nineteenth century Britain was acutely class conscious and children were

viewed as miniature adults to be inducted into the ways of social convention. Character

was viewed as a class-based concept which contained within it a judgment regarding an

individual’s status as much as their good conduct. The growing middle classes realized that

money alone would not secure them the coveted status of the “character of a gentleman.”

Increasingly they sent their sons to the rapidly expanding number of independent schools.

There was a marked revival of interest in character formation for middle class children in

the 1820s which began ﬁrst in some reformed public schools (Rotblatt, 1976, pp. 133–134).

Teachers overtook wider societal experience to become the main facilitators for this shaping

Character Education in Britain and America s 47

of character. It was considered important that students developed strong characters from

which they could take a principled stand, usually in favor of the established virtues of

society. Stefan Collini (1985) identiﬁes these Victorian virtues as including: bravery, loyalty,

diligence, application, and manners. Thomas Arnold, the Headmaster of Rugby, gave voice

to middle class aspirations by emphasizing that the educational ideal should be the produc-

tion of the “noble character,” the “man of character,” or more precisely the Christian manly

spirit, better known as “muscular Christianity.” His aim was no less than the formation of

the Christian character in the young through “godliness and good learning.”

Supporters of Arnold were strong adherents of character formation. As well as insti-

tuting stern disciplinary regimes in their schools, they encouraged reading of selected

great authors to discern the essential core of “common” values. There was a strong belief

that games developed manliness and inspired, inter alia, the virtues of fairness, loyalty,

moral and physical courage and co-operation. Games in the private schools were thus

constituted as a course in ethics. The public schools also socialized young men into the

habit of good manners. In this view character was a form of social and moral capital and

the function of the school was to provide the right environment in which the “right”

people could, at an early stage, get to know one another. For many, character was not an

ideal, but a display of the required manners solely to those they considered their elders

and betters. This was an education designed for the social elite and generally for men,

it was not the character of a gentleman, but the reputation of gentlemen, and the social

advantage that it would bring, that was the goal in educating their children.

The Victorian period was certainly a high point in character education, or perhaps

more accurately the use of the language of character. The Victorians meant many things

by the use of the word character. The notion of character formation they operated led

to much ambiguity and contradiction in behavior. Much more general was the view that

character equaled a socialization in good manners and in a particular form of social

conduct. Whilst there was a recognition that human nature could be directly shaped by

education, the notion of character was largely embodied in laws, institutions, and social

expectations. The kinds of character that teachers and educational thinkers espoused

and the training methods they used also varied enormously. Schools as a place to train

character was not a totally new concept, but it came to distinguish the English private

school, and inﬂuenced character education in America.

It is important to remember that British society was relatively homogeneous in reli-

gious outlook at this time. There was a common set of values derived from scripture and

Protestantism. Morality was not a controversial issue for most schoolteachers since the

generalized Protestantism which pervaded culture was implicitly accepted by teachers and

by those who wrote the school textbooks of the period (Arthur, Deakin Crick, Samuel,

Wilson, & McGettrick, 2001, pp. 61f.). Even when a Victorian abandoned religious belief

this did not necessarily mean a lowering of ethical standards. Instead, agnostics pursued

the moral life as a good in itself. Their enthusiasm for instilling moral character in the

masses was often greater than that displayed by some Evangelicals. There is a long history

of ill-conceived, ineffective, and failed efforts at character education in Britain.

As the religious basis for morality began to decline by the late nineteenth century, for

some the latter became the surrogate of the former and there developed a heightened

awareness of ensuring that moral standards in society and in individuals were upheld. This

was the secular ethic, which profoundly inﬂuenced the progress of character education

in schools. Secular character training became an alternative to the moral lessons derived

48 s J. Arthur

from Bible teaching and those who used the term “character training” were often the

progressives in education. They used this language to avoid conﬂict with religious-based

moral education, but it remained an ethic ﬁrmly based on puritan foundations. In 1886

the Ethical Union was established in Britain by a group of agnostics with the primary

objective of seeking a secular basis for morality. They became interested in the education

of character and formed the Moral Instruction League in 1897. The Moral Instruction

League was opposed to Bible reading in schools and encouraged parents to withdraw

their children from religious lessons. The government’s view of character training was

expressed in the Introduction to the Education Code of 1904 and 1905, in which it was

stated that “The purpose of the public elementary school is to form and strengthen the

character and to develop intelligence, of the children entrusted to it.” The language and

the notion of character here is more Greek than Christian in origin; a certain lip-service

was paid to Christianity in order to legitimate or strengthen a secular ethic.

The Moral Instruction League comprised many of the leading educational thinkers

and philosophers of the time. It aimed: “to substitute systematic non-theological moral

instruction for the present religious teaching in all State schools, and to make character

the chief aim of school life” (see Hilliard, 1961, p. 53). It further stated:

The aim of moral instruction is to form the character of the child. With this object in

view, the scholar’s intellect should be regarded mainly as the channel through which

to inﬂuence his feelings, purposes, and acts. The teacher must constantly bear this in

mind, since knowledge about morality has missed its aim when no moral response

is awakened in the child. A moral instruction lesson ought to appeal to the scholar’s

feelings, and also to affect his habits and his will.

(1961, pp. 53f.)

This was a good deﬁnition of character education in its day and whilst the League did

not recommend any speciﬁc teaching methods it did produce a syllabus for use in

schools in 1901. Developments in the US, particularly the Character Education League,

produced many curriculum materials with the explicit aim of teaching about and devel-

oping in children 31 virtues aimed at establishing an integral virtue called “character.”

These virtues were almost identical to the Moral Education League’s syllabus so there

must have been some cross-fertilization of ideas.

CHARACTER EDUCATION IN AMERICA

Character education has deep roots in the American public school system. Virtually

every school in the US in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was responding in

some implicit way to the educational goal of developing character. During the colonial

period character education was based on theology, a reﬂexive Protestantism predomi-

nated in society, and the Founding Fathers saw moral education as a way of shaping the

young into good citizens. However, in common with the experience in Britain, charac-

ter education began to drift away from its Christian moorings by the late nineteenth

century. Traditional character education approaches continued in the early twentieth

century often without explicit reference to Christian ideals. Craig Cunningham provides

a critical survey of the history of character education in the US which is an excellent start

for those interested in a more detailed historical account (see Lapsley & Power, 2005).

Character Education in Britain and America s 49

One of the ﬁrst major empirical research investigations into character development

was entitled The Character Education Enquiry conducted in America by Hugh Hart-

shorne and Mark May (1928–1939). This enquiry seemed to deny that there was any-

thing that could be called character, which it deﬁned as the persistent dispositions to

act according to moral principle in a variety of situations. The results of their tests of

attitude did not consistently predict behavior and their most signiﬁcant ﬁnding was

that moral behavior appeared to be situation speciﬁc. This enquiry signiﬁcantly inﬂu-

enced the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and many other moral developmental research-

ers. However, the research methodology employed was limited. Hartshorne and May

took the proﬁle of a morally mature person as their model and asked a series of ques-

tions of young people on stealing, cheating, and lying. The conclusions were, ﬁrst; that

there is no correlation between character training and actual behavior. Second, that

moral behavior is not consistent in one person from one situation to another. Third,

that there is no relationship between what people say about morality and the way that

they act, and ﬁnally that cheating is distributed, in other words they claim that we all

cheat a little. These results presented a challenge to those who sought to directly teach

character to children.

By the 1950s cognitive psychology was becoming a discipline and gave great emphasis

to Kohlberg’s theories helping to make them popular in education. The success of Jean

Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Erik Erikson was due to their themes of development

which indicated progress. These themes satisﬁed the demands of culture at the time.

Culture and society had become more pluralistic and therefore schooling became more

sensitive to the increasing heterogeneity of children in many schools. These cognitive

approaches to moral education—character education—were also more compatible with

the liberal traditions of critical thinking rather than a virtues-based approach. Kohlberg

(1984) was perhaps the most inﬂuential of the developmental theorists and he believed

that knowledge of the good was constructed by the individual in a logical-cognitive

progress through six stages of development. Each stage represented a qualitatively dif-

ferent mode of moral thinking and that development could stall at any stage. Kohlberg

seemed to be dismissive of virtues as important in morality and to focus exclusively on

the cognitive structural dimension of the human person’s character development. His

early research speciﬁed no content and after some criticism (Peters, 1979) he sought to

address the substantive content of his approach and to differentiate his position from

the values clariﬁcation methods which gained widespread currency in schools. Kohl-

berg also differentiated his approach from value relativists, but many of his followers

in schools interpreted and applied his ideas in a way that lacked substantive content

for moral education. A number of writers have outlined the limits to the application of

Kohlberg’s moral psychology by raising a number of empirical and conceptual problems

(see Lapsley & Power, 2005).

The important work in the US of Peck and Havighurst (1960) on character education

helped to revive explicit thinking in the area, even though they concluded that each gen-

eration tended to perpetuate its strengths and weaknesses of character and that character

formation in the early years was relatively unmodiﬁable. The 1960s and 1970s were con-

cerned with values clariﬁcation and procedural neutrality in the classroom and there was

a widespread presumption in favour of moral relativism. It was the reaction against this

relativistic thought that has seen the reemergence of more traditional character educa-

tion approaches.

50 s J. Arthur

Cognitive psychologists, until recently, placed much emphasis on the development

of structure of moral reasoning which, they claimed, underlies decision-making. Some

even claimed universal application for this method, but David Carr (2002) casts doubts

on the scientiﬁc basis of many of these developmental theories and questions their logical

status. He observes that these theories were generally employed in support of progres-

sive approaches to education with their emphasis on choice of lifestyle. This, he claims,

ignores the more traditionalist perspectives that are generally concerned with initiating

students into the knowledge, values, and virtues of civil society. Progressives, accord-

ing to Carr, reject traditional perspectives because they do not wish to predetermine

the ends and the goals of human development and because they question the worth of

received knowledge and values. However, neo-Kohlbergian research ﬁnds cross-cultural

validity for most of Kohlberg’s stages (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999) and newer

approaches to moral cognition indicate that there is some evidence for universal elements

of moral judgment outside of a universal stage sequence. Larry Nucci (2001, p. 122) for

example, found in his research that basic moral concerns are shared across the range of

human societies and religious groups and that there exists common ground in making

moral judgments.

Given the multifarious positions taken in respect of character, it follows that the dis-

cussion about character education, and whether it is possible, is equally discordant. The

variety of approaches results in a bewildering variety of educational schemes and cur-

ricula. This may be seen as a positive phenomenon potentially resulting in concrete class-

room solutions, or perhaps as a wasteful overlapping of character education resources.

James Leming (1993, p. 35) believes that this diversity of academic opinion hampers

effective development of character education as a school subject. He says that: “the current

research in the ﬁeld consists of disparate bits and pieces of sociology, philosophy, child

development research, socio-political analysis, and a variety of different programmes of

evaluation.” It is necessary to say something ﬁrst of why traditional approaches to char-

acter education are increasingly being advocated.

THE LITANY OF ALARM

Those who have advocated character education in America and Britain often present it

as a response to a list of ills facing society which originate in the behavior of juveniles

(see British Social Trends). This list would normally include the following which have all

shown a stubborn increase despite many attempts by government, schools, and welfare

agencies to address their causes: suicides, especially of young males; teenage pregnancy

and abortion; the crime rate, particularly theft by minors; alcohol and drug abuse; sexual

activity and sexual abuse; teenage truancy and mental health problems. This teenage

dysfunction has to be contextualized and set against a backdrop of family breakdown,

domestic violence, poverty, and the provision of an endless diet of violence and sex in

the media. Perhaps as a result of this, increasing numbers of children are arriving in early

schooling showing symptoms of anxiety, emotional insecurity, and aggressive behav-

ior. They seem devoid of many social skills and suffer low self-esteem. There are many

reasons for the existence of these symptoms but they have a common effect in signiﬁ-

cantly reducing the ability of the school to develop positive character traits.

Thomas Lickona (1996) lists a further set of indicators of youth problems: dishon-

esty; peer cruelty; disrespect for adults and parents; self-centeredness; self-destructive

Character Education in Britain and America s 51

behavior; and ethical illiteracy. Altruism often appears as the exception whilst self-inter-

est has become the rule. The general moral relativism of society is also routinely blamed

by character educators for this litany of social and moral breakdown, which is often

referred to as a “crisis in moral education” (see Kilpatrick, 1992, pp. 13f.). This moral

relativism, it is claimed, has replaced the belief in personal responsibility with the notion

of social causation.

A criticism leveled at promoters of character education by certain commentators is

that they do not examine sufﬁciently the complex issues which underlie many of the

social statistics they detail. David Purple (1997, p. 147) makes the point that “Even if

there has been a signiﬁcant increase in teen-age pregnancies there is still a question of

why it is considered a moral transgression.” He asks which framework character edu-

cators use to criticize the degeneration they see around them. For Purple, teenage preg-

nancy and divorce are not problems at all. Timothy Rusnak (1998, 1) believes that fear

is the justiﬁcation for many character education programs in the US. Others would

strongly argue that there has never been a “golden age,” that every generation for the past

two hundred years have simply produced their own “litany of alarm.” Harry McKown

(1935, pp. 18–34), writing in America in the 1930s provides his own litany. He bemoans

the social break-up of the family (caused by economic pressures as opposed to marital

difﬁculties); he decries the excessive individualism of the age; notes the decline in citizen

participation in elections; abhors the “tremendous increase in crime”; is saddened by

fewer young people attending Church; is concerned by the negative effect of advertising

on the young; and sees the implications for morality in everything from public dancing

and smoking to the wearing by young people of “types of close-to-nature clothing and

bathing suits.”

CRITICISMS OF CHARACTER EDUCATION

Terry McLaughlin and Mark Halstead (1999, p. 136) take issue with contemporary

approaches to character education in the US, as do two major critics of the movement

in America—David Purple (1997) and Robert Nash (1997). They all claim, rightly, that

American character educators generally begin with detailing the social ills of society and

then offer character education as a remedy; that these character educators also believe

that core values can be identiﬁed, justiﬁed, and taught. In addition, they claim that char-

acter educators seek explicit teaching in the public schools of moral virtues, dispositions,

traits, and habits, to be inculcated through content and the example of teachers, together

with the ethos of the school and direct teaching and that the success of character educa-

tion programs should be measured by the changes in the behavior of students. Character

educators also, they claim, leave explaining difﬁcult moral concepts until later in the

student’s development. They then criticize these views by outlining that character educa-

tion is narrowly concerned with certain virtues, that it is restricted, limited, and focuses

on traditional methods of teaching. Also, that there is a limited rationale given for the

aims and purposes of character education by those who propose it in schools and that

there is also a restricted emphasis on the use of critical faculties in students. McLaughlin

and Halstead (1999, p. 139) observe that the character education movement: “lacks a

common theoretical perspective and core of practice.”

Whilst McLaughlin and Halstead are reasonably sympathetic to character education,

they paint a bleak picture of current narrow practices in the US. However, they fail to deal

52 s J. Arthur

with Nash whose language can often be extreme. Nash (1997) believes that most models

of character education are deeply and seriously ﬂawed, authoritarian in approach, too

nostalgic, premodern in understanding of the virtues, aligned to reactionary politics,

anti-intellectual, antidemocratic, and above all dangerous. He seeks to replace this tradi-

tion of character education with one that is not based on any moral authority and one

which has an absence of a common moral standard by which to evaluate competing

moral vocabularies. If this is what he seeks then McLaughlin and Halstead should have

pointed out that he cannot condemn other competing moral vocabularies as he so obvi-

ously does from his own postmodern position. It appears that Nash refuses to acknow-

ledge that all education rests on assumptions and beliefs and that a plurality of positions,

including character education, can coexist. In the case of Purple (1997, p. 140) they do

not answer his claim that character educators are “disingenuous” in their debates about

character education and that they are effectively a conservative political movement with

a hidden agenda. In any event, there is no necessary connection between a conservative

political outlook and character education (see Howard, Berkowitz, & Shaeffer, 2004). A

reasonable outline of the limits of the various approaches to traditional character educa-

tion is provided by Larry Nucci (2001, pp. 129f.).

David Brooks and Frank Goble (1997) in The Case for Character Education follow

a standard structure of argument used by many who advocate school-based charac-

ter education. As previously mentioned, Harry McKown (1935) was one of the ﬁrst to

develop a model of writing about character within the context of schooling, a framework

which has since been adopted by many others. McKown’s book deﬁnes character educa-

tion, presents a 1930s litany of alarm, explains why we should have character education

in schools, describes the objectives of such a program, suggests how it should be in the

curriculum, through the curriculum, as an extra-curricular activity, how it should be in

the home and community, and how it might be assessed.

Brooks and Goble follow the same pattern. They ﬁrst ask “what is wrong with Kids?”

and answer: “they just don’t seem to know the difference between right and wrong”

(1997, p. 1). They then focus on student crime rates, etc., detailing a litany of alarm. This

leads to the conclusion that something needs to be done. They cite a lack of standards

as the reason for the problem and they offer character education as the solution. They

then attack all the other methods of moral education, ranging from values clariﬁcation

to cognitive theories of development, and this is then followed by the outlining of a

number of teaching methods for character education. A virtue-ethics approach to char-

acter education is suggested, but what this would entail for teaching in schools is never

explained. These books, whether consciously or not, follow a model which has its origins

in McKown’s 1935 seminal work and which was revived by Thomas Lickona’s publica-

tion of Education for Character in 1991.

CONTEMPORARY DEFINITIONS OF CHARACTER EDUCATION

It is important to stress that few in America or Britain would consider the school the most

important location for character education, even if it remains the main public institu-

tion for the formal moral education of children. The mass media, religious communities,

youth culture, peer groups, voluntary organizations, and above all parents and siblings,

account for signiﬁcant inﬂuences on character formation. It cannot be easily assumed

that the school makes more of a difference than any of these. It would be reasonable to

Character Education in Britain and America s 53

assume that certain positive features of the school contribute to character development.

Yet it is common in society to hold students responsible, not only for their behavior, but

also for their own character, at a time when the burden of character education has inevit-

ably been falling principally on the school. Obviously, some schools have the potential to

be more effective than others at inﬂuencing character development. Some would argue

that the ordinary public or State school has a more limited role in this for it would need

to open longer and for many more days in the year to have a greater effect on character

formation. However, in deﬁning character education Ryan and Bohlin (1999, p. 190) say

that it “is about developing virtues—good habits and dispositions which lead students

to responsible and mature adulthood.” The difﬁculty in attempting to deﬁne character

education is that the concept is more ethically reﬂected upon than empirically studied

which means that it is often deﬁned in terms of its educational practices. Narvaez (2006,

pp. 703f.) provides a review of the various deﬁnitions employed in current practice.

In reviewing the diverse views of character educators in America Anne Lockwood

(1997, p. 179) develops a “tentative” deﬁnition of character education. She deﬁnes charac-

ter education as a school-based activity that seeks to systematically shape the behavior of

students—as she says: “Character education is deﬁned as any school-instituted program,

designed in cooperation with other community institutions, to shape directly and sys-

tematically the behaviour of young people by inﬂuencing explicitly the non-relativistic

values believed directly to bring about that behaviour.” She details three central propo-

sitions: ﬁrst; that the goals of moral education can be pursued, not simply left to an

uncontrolled hidden curriculum and that these goals should have a fair degree of public

support and consensus. Second, that behavioral goals are part of character education.

Third, that antisocial behavior on the part of children is a result of an absence of values.

There is of course a presumed relation here with values and behavior.

I would add a fourth proposition: that many character educators not only seek to

change behavior, but actually seek to produce certain kinds of character; to help form

them in some way. The use of the terms “form” and “formation” here is not to be under-

stood passively, but rather as the individual’s active and conscious participation in their

own formation. Character education holds out the hope of what a person can be as

opposed to what they are. Character education is not the same as behavior control, dis-

cipline, training, or indoctrination, it is much broader and has much more ambitious

goals. Whilst good character and good behavior are similar the former is broader in

scope. Character is an inclusive term for the individual as a whole. Consequently, for

many character educators “character education” has much more to do with formation

and the transformation of a person and includes education in schools, families, and

through the individual’s participation in society’s social networks.

Much that passes for character education in schools is essentially a pluralistic vision

of character education that evades explicit directives for practice and lacks for many the

forcefulness to be compelling. How is it possible in a heterogeneous society, composed

of people who sharply disagree about basic values, to achieve a consensus about what

constitutes character education for citizens in a democracy? Can we agree on what con-

stitutes character education, on what its content should be, and how it should be taught?

We live in a pluralistic society in which our values appear to be constantly changing and

in which children are presented with all kinds of models and exposed to all kinds of

opinions about right and wrong. For some, this appears to necessitate a content-based

moral education curriculum that many others have rejected as too problematic and even

54 s J. Arthur

suspicious. Progressive educationalists have long advocated that individual development

should not be hindered by “controversial” moral content and they have cast suspicion

on the motives of others who propose such explicit content. Consequently, many teach-

ers and academics have sought to construct an implicit character education rationale

without subscribing to any particular set of values or content-based moral education.

They have found subscribing to any set of values deeply problematic in a pluralistic

society and so they often commit themselves to nothing in particular.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO CHARACTER EDUCATION

The contemporary approach to character education in schools has been to accord the

student a say in their own moral education, a degree of self-direction, which has been

largely inﬂuenced by the cognitive development theorists. At the same time adult direc-

tion and authority has suffered from a great deal of criticism. Since the 1960s progressive

teaching methods have emphasized child-centered learning, learning through experi-

ence, neutrality, and cooperative learning. These ideas in education tend to view the

teacher as a professional educator who should not attempt to deliberately stamp charac-

ter on students. Berkowitz and Bier (2005) have examined a range of empirical research,

principally in refereed academic journals, in character education to examine whether

character education works. They concluded that it does if “implemented effectively.”

They also identify 12 recommended and 18 promising practices in character education

that include: problem solving, empathy, social skills, conﬂict resolution, peace making,

and life skills. This is clearly a very broad view of what counts as character education

and most teachers would not readily associate the term “character education” with these

practices as a way to describe their intentions or objectives. Therefore, Berkowitz and

Bier (2005) do not say exactly what is distinctive about the content or teaching methods

of character education.

Teachers commonly argue that there is little room in the school curriculum to educate

for moral character. Many will say that moral character is the responsibility of parents

together with faith communities and that in any case in a multicultural society there is

no agreed way to determine what is good and bad character. There also appears to be

a growing “moral correctness” mindset in education, as teachers do not say things are

“immoral” for fear of being branded discriminatory. In fact, teachers are generally non-

judgmental in ofﬁcial language about children. However, it may be that talk of indoc-

trination and brainwashing often excuses the teacher from the really difﬁcult task of

thinking what values they might consciously inculcate. Instead of deciding what should

be taught suspicion is raised and concern is voiced about values and controversial issues.

Carr and Steutel (1999) have argued that character education ought to be grounded in

an explicit commitment to virtue ethics. Whilst the virtue-ethics approaches have made

inroads in mainstream education, few teachers have been prepared to deal with their

complexity. Teachers are, with few exceptions, ill equipped to discuss, far less consciously

adopt a virtue ethics approach to character education as they lack the language in virtue-

ethics discourse.

Narvaez (2005, pp. 154–155) has argued strongly that character education should

be based on psychologically valid research. Her approach offers a promising line of

research which has been to integrate the insights from developmental theory and psy-

chological science into character education. To this end she has described a model

Character Education in Britain and America s 55

of character development and education which she calls Integrative Ethical Educa-

tion (IEE) that sees character as a set of component skills that can be cultivated to a

high level of expertise. She has identiﬁed the characteristic skills of persons with good

character and believes that children move along a continuum from novice to expert in

each ethical content domain that is studied. As she says “True ethical expertise requires

concurrent competent interaction with the challenge of the environment using a

plethora of processes, knowledge and skills” (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005, pp. 155). This

expertise approach to moral character requires a well-structured school environment

in which the child is able to understand and develop skills together with opportun-

ities for focused practice. The child learns from a variety of experiences and builds a

knowledge base that can be used in authentic practical learning experiences. Narvaez

makes clear that this understanding in the child ought to be evident in their practice

and action. She makes clear that her approach is not simply about intellectual ability

or mere technical competence. It is an attempt to integrate character education with

cognitive science.

Traditionalist advocates for character education include the writings of Bennett

(1991), Kilpatrick (1992), Ryan (1996), and Wynne and Ryan (1993). These writers are

agreed that moral maturity requires character education that exhibits direct teaching

and close guidance of the young. Much of what has followed has built upon their work

and a range of authors draw inspiration from their writings. For example, Philip Vincent

(1999, p. 3) provides some helpful suggestions which he calls “rules and procedures for

character education.” He suggests that schools should identify the virtues that need to be

developed to help form character traits in students. These, he indicates, should be trans-

formed into rules which are the expectations for appropriate behavior and that these

should in turn become procedures which are practices needed to develop the habits of

following rules and developing good character. So, the virtue of “respect” becomes a rule

to treat all human beings with respect which becomes a set of procedures such as not

interrupting others whilst they are speaking. Vincent and many others have looked at

ways of translating the virtues into practical suggestions for teachers.

Bill Puka (2000, p. 131) in reviewing character education programs identiﬁes six teach-

ing methods. These are: 1) instruction in basic values and virtues; 2) behavioral codes

established and enforced; 3) telling stories with moral lessons; 4) modeling desirable

traits and values; 5) holding up moral exemplars in history, literature, religion, and extol-

ling their traits; 6) providing in school and community outreach opportunities (service

projects) through which students can exercise “good” traits and pursue “good” values.

There are a wide variety of character development strategies which include those listed

by Puka, but few have been evaluated. There are also certain assumptions of character

educators implicitly or explicitly contained in these strategies. Whilst some subscribe

to the psychological idea of moral development as developmental progression through

stages, some prefer to substitute the word “development” for “formation.” Many char-

acter educators do not accept that moral values are relative—they generally insist that

moral values can be objectively grounded in human nature and experience. Some would

also claim that moral action is not simply rational, but involves the affective qualities of

a human being, including feelings and emotions (see Nucci, 2001, p. 122). Ryan (1996)

and Wynne and Ryan (1993) would reject many models of moral education as inad-

equate on the basis that they are not comprehensive enough to capture the full complex-

ity of human character.

56 s J. Arthur

Kevin Ryan and Thomas Lickona (1987, pp. 20ff.) provide an interesting model of

character development that involves three basic elements—knowledge, feeling, and

action. Lickona (1991) further developed this model. First, students learn moral content

from our heritage. This heritage is not static, but subject to change for it can be altered

and added to. The student learns to know the good through informed rational deci-

sion-making. Moral reasoning, decision-making, and the ability to gain self-knowledge

through reviewing and evaluating behavior are all essential in this dimension of charac-

ter development. Second, the affective domain, which includes feelings of sympathy, care,

and love for others and is considered by Lickona as an essential bridge to moral action.

Lickona (1991, pp. 58ff.) refers to this second element as feelings and adds conscience,

love, empathy, and humility as important aspects of it. Third, action depends on the will,

competence, and habit of a person. Will is meant in the sense that a student must will

their way to overcoming their self-interest and any pride or anxiety they have in order to

do what they know to be the right action. Students must also develop the competence to

do the “good” which involves certain skills and they must freely choose to repeat these

good actions as a form of habit. Ryan and Lickona tell us that these three elements of

action do not always work together. Their model also states that character development

takes place in and through human community. This requires students to be participative

in the affairs of the community.

Thomas Lickona (1996) also outlines 11 principles that have been largely adopted by

the Character Education Partnership in the US as criteria for planning a character educa-

tion program and for recognizing the achievements of schools through the conferment

of a national award. Whilst he does not consider these principles to be exhaustive, they

are:

1. Schools should be committed to core ethical values.

2. Character should be comprehensively deﬁned to include thinking, feeling, and

behavior.

3. Schools should be proactive and systematic in teaching character education and

not simply wait for opportunities.

4. Schools must develop caring atmospheres and become a microcosm of the

caring community.

5. Opportunities to practise moral actions should be varied and available to all.

6. Academic study should be central.

7. Schools need to develop ways of increasing the intrinsic motivation of students

who should be committed to the core values.

8. Schools need to work together and share norms for character education.

9. Teachers and students should share in the moral leadership of the school.

10. Parents and community should be partners in character education in the

school.

11. Evaluate the effectiveness of character education in both school, staff, and stu-

dents.

Lapsley and Narvaez (2006, p. 269) offer a useful critique of these principles which they

claim appear, at ﬁrst sight, to be a kind of manifesto for progressive education.

Almost all character educators emphasize the importance of the school ethos in

advancing arguments about character education (De Vries, 1998; Grant, 1982; Wynne

Character Education in Britain and America s 57

& Walberg, 1985). These authors have all claimed that there is a relation between school

ethos and educational outcomes concerning moral character. There is of course no such

thing as a “value-free” school ethos. The research and writings of Edward Wynne (1982,

1985/1986) also suggest that the school ethos is crucial to an effective character program.

Ryan (1996, p. 75) contends that “classroom life is saturated with moral meaning that

shapes students’ character and moral development.” Wynne focuses on the school rather

than on the individual student. He believes that the school could teach morality without

saying a single word about it. We can see this in the fact that character or moral educa-

tion is rarely formally recorded in any lesson plans or schemes of work—rather it forms

part of the hidden curriculum. No elementary teacher would doubt how the school often

acts as a family for many students replicating some of the formative inﬂuences of the

family environment—warmth, acceptance, caring relationships, love, and positive role

models.

The emphasis on school ethos is a relatively new feature within character education.

The term “ethos” is an elusive concept and is closely associated with notions of “atmo-

sphere,” “climate,” “culture,” and “ethical environment.” Consequently, it is difﬁcult to

focus on the speciﬁc meaning of “ethos” for the purpose of analysis and discussion.

However, there is a strong and widely-held assumption that the ethos of a school inﬂu-

ences the formation of quality relationships and even promotes good moral character.

There is some emerging evidence to support these assumptions (see Arthur et al., 2001).

Nevertheless, greater critical attention is needed to the kinds of educative inﬂuence

“ethos” might have in its relation to moral character. There is also a greater awareness

of the role of the “hidden curriculum” on character development and some believe that

the indirect methods of teaching character are perhaps more beneﬁcial than traditional

curricula-based approaches.

Schools in a democracy are not total institutions—the home is the primary shaper of

character whilst the school is only a secondary shaper. Schools are limited institutions in

democratic societies which are only able to support certain values and virtues of homes

and society when asked to do so. Teachers are clearly already involved in the formation

of character of their students simply by being part of the school community. In practice

most teachers view certain kinds of action by students as wrong and it is not unusual to

ﬁnd teachers insisting, for example, that students ought always to tell the truth. In a study

of 2,000 student teachers in England (Arthur, 2005) it was found that the overwhelming

majority believed that the teacher inﬂuenced the character of their students and that

this process of inﬂuencing moral values was integral to the role of the teacher. However,

it was clear that the students experienced no common practice of moral or character

education in schools and their training courses were inadequate at preparing them for

this role. In another study of 551 students over a two-year period between the ages of

16 and 19 it was found that the quality of relationships between teachers and students is

of central importance for character formation in schools, especially teachers modeling

values (Arthur et al., 2001).

CONCLUSION

The development of moral character has been a traditional goal of moral education in

schools. Traditional character education focuses on the inculcation of virtuous traits of

character as the aim of education. Character education is a label or generic term for a

58 s J. Arthur

wide range of approaches to moral education, but speciﬁc programs often lack an explicit

deﬁnition of what counts as character, they lack solid supporting empirical evidence, and

they often lack a speciﬁc theory that underlines them. There are also few evaluations of

any traditional approaches to character education in schools. Nevertheless, since charac-

ter refers to that combination of rational and acquired factors which distinguish one indi-

vidual from another it is clear that certain aspects of character building are beyond the

realm of measurement. Another problem concerns the nature of the teaching role—an

exemplary teacher will naturally establish a good ethos in their class and will promote

good behavior with or without an explicit character education program. Character is not

considered to be formed automatically, but is developed through teaching, example, and

practice. There are also new approaches that have emerged to character education from

cognitive psychology.

We can conclude that different approaches to character education will be viewed

more or less favorably by people of different worldviews. However, because of the wide

variety of approaches to character education it is difﬁcult to evaluate them en masse—it

is necessary to look at individual projects. The research to-date tells us that the danger

of traditional character education lies in adopting inappropriate teaching techniques

for the classroom which include an overtly coercive teacher-dominated approach. That

said, character education programs are popular in many schools and the development

of character can be effective moral education, especially when integrated into the whole

curriculum and school life.

NOTES

1. Lapsley and Narvaez (2006) and Narvaez (2006, p. 703) provide an excellent review of this developmental

research tradition over the last ﬁve decades.

2. Plato’s Republic is presented in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors. It

is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. Aristotle’s Ethics

converted ethics from a theoretical to a practical science and also introduced psychology into his study of

behavior. Aristotle both widens the ﬁeld of moral philosophy and simultaneously makes it more accessible

to anyone who seeks an understanding of human nature. There are many editions of both books and the

editions cited in the references are published by Penguin Books in the UK.

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Educational Leadership, 43 (4), 15–18.

LAWRENCE KOHLBERG’S REVOLUTIONARY IDEAS

Moral Education in the Cognitive-Developmental Tradition

John Snarey and Peter L. Samuelson

INTRODUCTION

Lawrence Kohlberg’s ideas about moral formation and moral education were revolu-

tionary. He made morality a central concern in psychology, and he remains the person

most often identiﬁed as a founding ﬁgure in the ﬁeld of moral psychology, including

moral development and moral education. He understood that children and adoles-

cents, as well as adults, are developing moral philosophers, capable of forming their

own moral judgments and capable of revising them. Kohlberg is best known for his

three models of moral formation (moral stages, types, and atmosphere) and his three

methods of moral education (moral exemplars, dilemma discussions, and Just Com-

munity schools). Overall, Kohlberg created lasting frameworks for approaching the

study of moral cognition and development and inspired educational programs to

prepare citizens for living in a participatory democracy.

Kohlberg (1958, 1969), like all revolutionary thinkers, also stands on the shoulders

of his predecessors. Kohlberg’s approach to moral education is rooted in the theories

and methods of Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and Emile Durkheim (1858–1917). The ideas

of these two giants in the ﬁeld of moral development and education are also evident

in contemporary approaches to moral and character education. The approach most

inﬂuenced by Piaget is often called Moral Education. It emphasizes that students

participate in moral thought and action through moral dilemma discussions, role-

play, collaborative peer interaction, and a democratic classroom and school culture.

Another approach more inﬂuenced by Durkheim is often called Character Educa-

tion. It emphasizes the direct teaching of virtues and exemplary character traits, role

modeling, and reinforcement of good behavior (Althof & Berkowitz, 2006; Berkowitz,

2012). Kohlberg draws creatively from both traditions in fashioning his approach to

moral development and education.

62 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

PIAGET’S COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH

Piaget viewed the development of morality through the lens of his “cognitive-develop-

mental” theory. In this view, a series of organized cognitive structures that govern a child’s

thoughts and actions are transformed in an ordered sequence as the child constructs,

through interaction with the environment, increasingly useful and more complex cog-

nitive operations. In The Moral Judgment of the Child, Piaget (1932) distinguished two

types of moral reasoning, each of which shows a different understanding of respect, fair-

ness, and punishment:

1. Heteronomous morality. Initially morality is based on unilateral respect for

authorities and the rules they prescribe. Fairness is understood as obedience to

authorities and conformity to their “sacred” rules; consequences are understood

as concrete, objective damage, which carries more weight than intentions;

expiatory punishment is the favored way of making things right.

2. Autonomous morality. Morality is based on mutual respect, reciprocity, and

equality among peers. Fairness is understood as mutually agreed upon

cooperation and reciprocal exchange. Intentionality is understood as relevant;

both intentions and consequences can be kept in mind concurrently; punish-

ment by reciprocity is favored.

Piaget saw moral development as the movement from heteronomous morality to auto-

nomous morality and believed that social interactions, especially with peers, would fuel

moral development.

Piaget was a strong advocate of democratic educational methods and critiqued what

he believed to be Durkheim’s position on this point:

The problem is to know what will best prepare the child for its future task of citizen-

ship. . . . For ourselves we regard as of the utmost importance the experiments that

have been made to introduce democratic methods into schools. We therefore do not

at all agree with Durkheim in thinking that it is the master’s business to impose or

even to “reveal” rules to the child.

(1932, pp. 363–364)

Piaget claimed that educators best promote mature moral reasoning by talking with

children as equals in the search for knowledge rather than with indoctrinative authority

that promotes the consolidation of childish reasoning. Piaget considered his moral

development approach to be the “opposite pole from the Durkheimian pedagogy”

(1932, p. 362).

DURKHEIM’S CULTURAL SOCIALIZATION APPROACH

Durkheim’s core principles are laid out in his 1902 and 1903 lecture series, published

posthumously as Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of the Soci-

ology of Education (1925). At the center of Durkheim’s approach is collective sociali-

zation or cultural transmission, which is the process whereby a person learns society’s

norms and expectations through instruction and explanation, role models, and group

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 63

reinforcement. Therefore, education for moral character is primarily about social solid-

arity, group conformity, and mutual support.

Durkheim maintained that social norms were the most effective means of control,

not because they are socially imposed from the outside, but because they are voluntarily

internalized and come to function as the society’s norms living within its members. He

posited three elements of morality:

Spirit of discipline. Morality requires respect for social norms and authority and con-

sistent conduct.

Spirit of altruism. Morality requires that persons be attached to and identiﬁed with

social groups.

Autonomy or self-determination. Though the society is the ﬁnal authority for the

child, the child must freely choose whether to follow the society’s rules.

Durkheim held that collective responsibility, applied with restraint and judgment, is

central to moral education. Thus, in the practice of moral education, the school has a

crucial and clearly speciﬁed function: to create a new being shaped according to the

needs of society. Kohlberg, inﬂuenced by Piaget’s writings on Durkheim, originally saw

striking limitations to this method and derisively labeled contemporary attempts at

moral socialization as a “bag of virtues” approach:

Although it may be true that the notion of teaching virtues, such as honesty or integ-

rity, arouses little controversy, it is also true that vague consensus on the goodness of

these virtues conceals a great deal of actual disagreement over their deﬁnitions. What

is one person’s “integrity” is another person’s “stubbornness,” what is one person’s

honesty in “expressing your true feelings” is another person’s insensitivity to the feel-

ings of others.

(Kohlberg, 1981, pp. 9–10)

Kohlberg believed that an enculturation approach leaves one open to ethical relativity,

and he did not want to base his approach on socially relative virtues.

Kohlberg eventually realized that Piaget had attacked something of a caricature of

Durkheim. Both Piaget and Durkheim agreed, for instance, that moral behavior entails

cognitive understanding and the exercise of free will, not just imitating role models or ideals

of virtue. As Durkheim was careful to indicate, “To teach morality is neither to preach nor

to indoctrinate; it is to explain” (1925, p. 20). Beyond their shared belief in the egoism

of the child, both also stressed the importance of groups’ social relations for the child’s

development, and that morality is formed in the context of relationships and role taking

experiences (cf. Selman, 1971, 2003). Finally, both viewed a school’s classroom dynamics

and authority structure as inevitably involved in moral education (cf. Power, 2004).

KOHLBERG’S REFINED DEVELOPMENTAL-SOCIALIZATION APPROACH

Kohlberg’s work is primarily identiﬁed with the “cognitive-developmental paradigm.”

His stage theory of moral development, like Piaget’s, postulates that moral reasoning

64 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

proceeds through an invariant sequence of stages toward an increasingly adequate

understanding of what is just or fair. In this view, the child is a philosopher who actively

constructs and makes sense of his or her world. The educator’s aim is to provide the

conditions that promote the natural progression of moral judgment by providing ethi-

cally enriched and stimulating educational experiences within which a child is allowed to

exercise moral choice. Motivated by insights gained during educational efforts, Kohlberg

reread and reconsidered Durkheim. He came to see that the unit of education was the

group, not simply the individual, and that moral education should change a school’s

moral culture, not only develop a person’s moral reasoning. In one of his ﬁrst public

statements of his revised perspective, Kohlberg said:

It is not a sufﬁcient guide to the moral educator, who deals with concrete morality

in a school world in which value content as well as structure, behavior as well as rea-

soning, must be dealt with. In this context, an educator must be a socializer, teaching

value content and behavior, not merely a Socratic or Rogerian process-facilitator of

development. In becoming a socializer and advocate, the teacher moves into “indoc-

trination,” a step that I originally believed to be invalid . . . I no longer hold these

negative views of indoctrinative moral education. . . . Now I believe that moral educa-

tion can be in the form of advocacy or “indoctrination” without violating the child’s

rights if there is an explicit recognition of shared rights of teachers and students and

as long as teacher advocacy is democratic, or subject to the constraints of recogniz-

ing student participation in the rule-making and value-upholding process.

(1978, pp. 14–15)

Moral development and education, thus revised, involve a synthesis of both the demo-

cratic socialization of moral content and the developmental promotion of moral rea-

soning. By democratizing Durkheim, Kohlberg hoped to give priority to the power of

the collective in a way that also protected the rights of the individual. These two con-

cepts—the cognitive-developmental promotion of moral reasoning and the collective

socialization of moral content—form the foundation on which Kohlberg constructed

his three models of moral cognition and his three approaches to moral education.

KOHLBERG’S THREE MODELS OF MORAL COGNITION AND

DEVELOPMENT

Kohlberg is renowned for his stage model of moral development. Though his basic stage

theory had changed little since its inception in his dissertation study (1958, 2008), Kohl-

berg augmented it with two additional models. Thus, within the paradigm of structural-

ism, Kohlberg actually created three models: (1) moral stages, (2) moral types, and (3)

social-moral atmosphere levels. Together, they provide a fairly comprehensive view of

human moral cognition and development.

Moral Stages

Kohlberg believed that moral judgment development progressed through six stages: cog-

nitively structured moral reasoning steps that follow an invariant sequence. What drives

moral development is the adequacy or inadequacy of moral thought structures in making

sense of experience. The human mind assimilates the environment to existing thought

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 65

structures and, when this assimilation fails, accommodates by modifying them to more

adequately make sense of environmental moral issues. Kohlberg used moral dilemma

interviews as his research tool; he presented the equivalent of nine dilemmas to a cohort

of 84 adolescent boys and then studied how they reasoned about the dilemmas.

Whereas Piaget primarily saw two thought structures in moral reasoning (outlined

above), Kohlberg believed that six age-related thought structures best described his

subject’s reasoning about the dilemmas. In the moral realm, that is, a person pro-

gresses from focusing on the self, in which he or she tries to avoid punishment or

maximize gains (pre-conventional stages 1 & 2), to include the perspective of those

in close relation to himself or herself, which will eventually include whole systems of

relationships expressed in groups, institutions, and society as a whole (conventional

stages 3 & 4). According to Kohlberg, a person cannot move from pre-conventional to

conventional moral reasoning unless and until he or she can think beyond an egocen-

tric perspective and hold multiple perspectives in mind (one’s own, the other’s, and

the needs and rights of the group) while performing mental operations on a moral

issue. The ﬁnal level (post-conventional stages 5 & 6) involves holding a complex array

of perspectives and thoughts about right moral action against a universalizable set of

moral values and principles. Kohlberg’s (1981, 1984, 1987) six stages are deﬁned in

Table 5.1.

Overall, Kohlberg’s model of moral stage development illustrates the potential evolu-

tion of moral reasoning toward greater complexity and adequacy. Moral stages, for Kohl-

berg, were not simply moral ideals, ideal types, or virtual models of reasoning, but actual

cognitive-developmental stages in the evolving structure of the social-moral brain.

The sweeping nature of his approach received academic acclaim and media attention.

Scholars, of course, also subjected his work to intense scrutiny, raised several critical

questions, and pointed to the need for further research. High-quality empirical studies

were then conducted and, eventually, several decisive reviews of the accumulated research

studies were published. These reviews provided support for the following conclusions:

(a) Stage validity. Moral stages have been shown to be qualitatively different from

each other, and internally integrated structured wholes, which change in an

invariant sequence, one stage at a time (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987; Hart, 1992;

Kohlberg, 1984; cf. Dawson, 2002). Brain research, using non-invasive functional

magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanners, also has documented that distinct

areas of neural activation and distinct modes of neural connectivity differentiate

lower versus higher moral stage reasoning (cf. Caceda, James, Snarey, & Kilts,

2011; Prehn et al., 2008).

(b) Cross-cultural universality. The ﬁrst four stages are found in virtually all cul-

tural groups, and principled reasoning is found to some degree in all complex

societies with elaborated systems of education such as India, Japan, and Taiwan

(Snarey, 1985). Although the stage sequence is not altered by diverse cultural

context, post-conventional or principled reasoning becomes more pluralistic.

Although Kohlberg identiﬁed a particular form of post-conventional reasoning

that he believed was universal, research among non-Western cultural groups

and non-European-American racial-ethnic groups reveals a pluralistic array of

genuine ethical principles in addition to those addressed by Kohlberg’s theory

and scoring manual (cf. Siddle-Walker & Snarey, 2004; Snarey & Keljo, 1991).

Table 5.1 Kohlberg’s Six Developmental Stages of Justice Reasoning

Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment Orientation

At Stage 1, what is moral is to avoid breaking rules or to comply for obedience’s sake, and to avoid doing physical damage to people or property. Moral judgments

are self-evident, requiring little or no justiﬁcation beyond labeling. A person at Stage 1 does not realize that the interests of others may differ from his or her own.

Justice is understood as strict, literal equality, with special needs or mitigating circumstances not understood or taken into consideration. In situations in which an

authority is involved, justice is deﬁned as respectful obedience to the authority. The justiﬁcation for moral action or doing what is right includes avoidance of

penalties and the superior power of authorities.

Stage 2: Instrumental Purpose and Exchange

What is moral for the person at Stage 2 is to follow the rules when it is in the person’s immediate interest to do so, especially in terms of an equal exchange, a good

deal. The person now recognizes that other persons may have other interests. Justice involves relating conﬂicting individual interests through an instrumental

exchange of services or marketplace economy: You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. The justiﬁcation for being moral is to serve one’s own needs in a world

where one must recognize that other people also have their own interests, which may conﬂict with one’s own.

Stage 3: Mutual Interpersonal Expectations, Good Relations

A person at Stage 3 is able to coordinate the separate perspectives of individuals into a third-person perspective, which enables interpersonal trust, mutual

relationships, loyalty, and shared moral values. What is moral is conforming to what is expected by people close to you or what people generally expect of people

in one’s role as son, sister, parent, friend, and so on. Justice now can take into consideration a person’s worthiness, goodness, and circumstances. The justiﬁcations

for acting morally focus on the desire to be seen as a good person in one’s own eyes and those of others. One should be caring of others because, if you put

yourself in the other person’s shoes, you would want good behavior from others.

Stage 4: Social System and Conscience Maintenance

The right thing to do is to be a good citizen, uphold the social order, and maintain the society. What is moral involves fulﬁlling one’s duties. Laws are to be

upheld, except in extreme cases in which they conﬂict with other ﬁxed social duties. Justice centers on the notions of impartiality in application of the law;

procedural justice ﬁrst emerges as a central concern at Stage 4. A just decision also should take into consideration a person’s contribution to society. This is a

social-maintenance, rather than an interpersonal-maintenance, perspective; being moral involves contributing to one’s own society, group, or institution. The

justiﬁcations for being moral are to keep the institution functioning, to maintain self-respect for having met one’s deﬁned obligations, and to avoid setting a

socially disruptive precedent.

Stage 5: Prior Rights and Social Contract

What is moral is being aware that many values and rules are relative to one’s group and subsuming these culturally relative values under fundamental human

rights, such as the rights of life and liberty, which are logically prior to society. The person logically organizes rights and values into hierarchies from most to least

fundamental. Such non-relative rights are inviolable and should be built into and upheld by any society. Justice now focuses on human rights or social welfare;

due process is also a concern. This is a society-creating rather than a society-maintaining point of view. A social system is understood, ideally, as a social contract

freely entered into. A person reasoning at Stage 5 justiﬁes upholding the social contract because it preserves one’s own rights and the rights of others, ensures

impartiality, and promotes the greatest good for the greatest number.

Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles

Deciding what is moral is guided by universal ethical principles that generate decisions by which human dignity is ensured and persons are treated as ends in

themselves rather than simply as means. Particular laws or social agreements are usually valid because they rest on such ethical principles. When laws violate

these principles, however, one acts in accordance with the principle. Going beyond the importance of a social contract, Stage 6 also focuses on the process by

which a social agreement is reached. This is a moral-justice point of view, involving the deliberate use of justice principles, which centers on the equality of

human rights and respect for the dignity of all human beings as free and equal autonomous persons. The justiﬁcation for being moral is the belief, as that of a

rational person, in the validity of universal moral principles that all humanity should follow, and because one has made a self-conscious commitment to them.

Source: Siddle-Walker & Snarey (2004), pp. 18–19.

68 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

and signiﬁcantly associated. In both laboratory and real-life settings, moral rea-

soning is a signiﬁcant predictor of moral action, including altruistic behavior,

resistance of temptation, and nondelinquency (Blasi, 1980). Persons at higher

moral stages, for instance, are signiﬁcantly more likely to help a stranger who

needs medical attention (Kohlberg, 1984). The literature also shows a well-

established relation between moral immaturity and delinquency. A nine-year

longitudinal and cross-sectional study, for instance, conﬁrms the reciprocal

relation between moral immaturity and delinquency—the higher the moral

reasoning score, the lower the rate of delinquency (Raaijamkers, Engles, &

Hoof, 2005). Of course, although the association between moral reasoning and

moral action is positive and signiﬁcant, many moderating factors affect the

relation (cf. Bebeau, 2002; Kohlberg, Ricks, & Snarey, 1984; Palmer, 2003;

Thoma, 1994; Thoma, Rest, & Davison, 1991).

(d) Gender inclusiveness. Possible gender differences in moral judgment have been

a source of continued criticism and controversy. In her book, In a Different

Voice, Carol Gilligan (1982) was one of the ﬁrst to suggest that Kohlberg’s

model of moral development was biased to a more male-oriented morality of

justice at the expense of a morality of care and responsibility that better suits

female moral perspectives. Some research has shown that women and girls tend

to use more care-related concerns in their moral justiﬁcations (Garmon, Bas-

inger, Gregg, & Gibbs, 1996; Jaffe & Hyde, 2000). Nevertheless, a substantial

body of empirical evidence indicates that the current standardized scoring

system contains no signiﬁcant bias against women (Brabeck & Shore, 2002;

Walker, 1984) and that Rest’s Deﬁning Issues scoring system shows a very small

but stable gender effect that consistently favors women (Thoma, 1986). Many

studies show that women as well as men, and girls as well as boys, use Kohl-

berg’s ethic of justice (e.g., Garrod et al., 2003). Furthermore, any develop-

mental differences found are more situational than a reﬂection of gender

differences across the lifespan (Clopton & Sorell, 1993; Ryan, Reynolds, & Rey-

nolds, 2004; Thoma, 1986).

(e) Care is not reducible to justice. Carol Gilligan (1982) also identiﬁed a moral ori-

entation of care that was qualitatively different from the orientation of justice

and rights that dominates Kohlberg’s theory. While Kohlberg contended that

his model of justice included care, others concluded that Gilligan’s view had

enlarged the psychological understanding of morality (cf. Brabeck, 1984). A

number of studies offer evidence that an ethic of care, while used by both men

and women, is inadequately represented in Kohlberg’s theory (Gilligan, 1982),

hypothetical-dilemma interview method (Jaffee & Hyde, 2000), and scoring

manual (Walker, 1984). Philosophically, justice and care are equally vital and

equally irreducible principles in normative moral values (cf. Blum, 1988;

Siddle-Walker & Snarey, 2004). Biologically, neuroscience research had demon-

strated overlapping but signiﬁcantly different brain region activations during

the neural processing of care versus justice moral sensitivity dilemmas (Robert-

son et al., 2007; Snarey, 2008). In sum, the ethic of care is a separable ethical

voice that cannot be simply reduced to an element of an ethic of justice (cf.

Brabeck & Ting, 2000; Jorgensen, 2006; Puka, 1991; Sherblom, 2008).

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 69

Kohlberg’s stage model, despite a number of necessary qualiﬁcations and caveats,

remains theoretically forceful and pedagogically useful. It continues to generate innov-

ative, and sometimes ground-breaking, research into the nature of moral thought and

action, the causes of delinquency and criminal behavior, our nature as human beings,

and the understanding of ourselves as moral agents (cf. Gibbs, 2009; Gibbs, Basinger,

Grime, and Snarey, 2007; Parke & Clarke-Stewart, 2010).

Moral Types

Kohlberg (1976) and his colleagues (Schrader, Tappan, Kohlberg, & Armon, 1987; Tappan

et al., 1987) recognized that moral development stage scores did not account for some

important within-stage variations seen in moral judgment interviews. To address this

variation, they incorporated Piaget’s view of morality as two forms of moral judgment:

heteronymous and autonomous. They initially conceived of heteronomy and autonomy

as two substages within each of Kohlberg’s six stages (Lapsley, 1996). However, the term

“substage” was dropped because research showed that the so-called substages did not

meet Piaget’s criteria for stages (i.e., there was not an invariant sequence from A to B,

nor structured wholes).

Kohlberg then adopted from sociologist Max Weber (1949) the concept of “ideal

types,” that is, abstractions that deﬁne the extreme forms of the possible properties of

each stage. More speciﬁcally, Kohlberg and colleagues deﬁned heteronomy and auto-

nomy as two subtypes (A or B) that may occur within any stage (e.g., Stage 2A and Stage

2B). These subtypes are deﬁned by variations in the content of moral judgments, includ-

ing notions of freedom from external constraints, ideas about how human rules and

laws are constructed, and issues of who is to be included in the moral domain (Kohlberg,

1984). Moral types are, in essence, a way of accounting for some aspects of a person’s

reasoning that are overlooked when moral stages are assessed.

Type analysis or scoring focuses primarily on the content of moral reasoning,

whereas stage analysis focuses primarily on the cognitive structure of moral reason-

ing. When interviews are scored for moral type, the content of a person’s reasoning is

considered. Kohlberg and his colleagues looked for criteria to discern these ideal types

in the psychological and philosophical works of Piaget and Immanuel Kant. They

derived nine “content themes” and used them to discern the moral type of the subject

under examination. In the scoring manual for moral type, these theoretical criteria are

translated into coding criteria for each of the three standard interview dilemmas. The

unit of analysis for coding the moral types is the individual dilemma as a whole. Moral

type scores are calculated on the basis of the data that meet the criteria of the Piagetian

and Kantian categories that reﬂect autonomous reasoning in two out of three moral

dilemmas (Schrader et al., 1987). The nine criteria that determine moral type are sum-

marized in Table 5.2.

A six-year longitudinal cross-cultural study (Logan, Snarey, & Schrader, 1990) con-

ﬁrmed Kohlberg’s previous longitudinal ﬁndings from studies in the United States and

Turkey that type B reasoning increased with age. Moreover, the study found that the

achievement of type B reasoning was positively and signiﬁcantly associated with moral

stage development; that is, subjects who scored at higher stages were more likely to also

use type B reasoning. The longitudinal cross-cultural data, however, also showed a trend

of one-time shifts (from type A to type B), after which the type tended to remain stable.

Nevertheless, consistent with Kohlberg’s conceptualization of moral types, reversals from

70 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

type B to type A occurred, and both types of reasoning were used by some subjects at

every moral stage represented in their study (Stage 2 to Stages 4/5).

Kohlberg’s moral types also proved to be a strong conceptual tool for clarifying how

moral reasoning translates into moral action. In a number of studies analyzed (Kohlberg,

1984), subjects with a type B moral orientation were more likely to act in concordance

with their moral judgments and values even when those values conﬂicted with a prevail-

ing rule or authority. This discovery is exempliﬁed by data from 26 students involved

in the Milgram (1974) experiment who were given the Moral Judgment Interview. The

Milgram experiment, which was described to subjects as testing the effects of punish-

ment on memory, required the subjects to administer an increasingly powerful electric

shock to a victim in the event of a wrong answer, even to the point of rendering the victim

unconscious. The victim was an actor who was not actually shocked, but the situation

appeared very real, and subjects were forced to choose between obeying the authority of

the experimenter (dressed in a white lab coat and encouraging the subject to continue

administering the “shock”) versus discontinuing the suffering of the victim by ceasing to

participate in the experiment. None of the participants who had been assessed as moral

type A quit, and only 18% of those scored as “ambiguous” ceased participation in the

experiment. In contrast, a full 86% of the participants assessed as moral type B quit the

experiment regardless of moral stage (Kohlberg, 1984). Kohlberg explained these results

by noting that type B reasoning is characterized by a clear conception of the “right” thing

to do in a situation (deontic choice) as well as a sense of responsibility to act, born of

a fully developed notion of autonomy (freedom to act according to one’s own values

regardless of what others expect), reversibility (a desire to treat others as one would want

to be treated), and universality (that you would expect your action to be “right” in all

similar situations). Deontic choice and responsibility are two judgments that mediate

moral action, according to Kohlberg (1984).

Table 5.2 Kohlberg’s Distinctions Between Type A and Type B Moral Orientations

Criteria Type A (Heteronomous) Type B (Autonomous)

Hierarchy No clear moral hierarchy, reliance on

pragmatic and other concerns

Clear hierarchy of moral values;

prescriptive duties are primary

Instrinsicality Instrumental view of persons Persons as ends in themselves; respect

for autonomy, dignity

Prescriptivity Moral duty as instrumental or hypothetical Moral duty as moral obligation

Universality Judgments uncritically assumed to be held by

everyone or based on self-interest

Generalized view; applies to everyone

in same situation

Freedom External bases validate judgments No reliance on external authority or

tradition

Mutual respect Unilateral obedience Cooperation among equals

Reversibility Views the dilemma from only one point of

view

Understanding of the other’s

perspective; reciprocity

Constructivism Rigid view of rules and laws as ﬁxed Flexible view of rules and laws as

adaptable

Choice Does not choose or justify choice in terms of

fairness or justice

Chooses solution generally seen as just

or fair

Source: Logan, Snarey & Schrader (1990), p. 75.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 71

In sum, Kohlberg’s type categories expanded his stage theory in three respects: (1)

moral types primarily address the content of moral reasoning, whereas moral stages focus

on the structure of moral reasoning; (2) either type may occur at any stage and at any

age in the lifespan, thus accounting for observed within-stage variability (cf. Schraeder et

al., 1987); and (3) moral type helps clarify the connection between moral reasoning and

moral action.

Moral Atmosphere

Kohlberg (1980, 1985) and colleagues (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) developed the

concept of “moral atmosphere” to refer to a community’s shared expectations and norm-

ative values. He also referred to the concept as a community’s “moral climate” or “moral

culture.” Kohlberg understood that the group is the primary context for the development

of a moral person. At the time when this concept was being developed, his stage theory

was being criticized for his emphasis on the individual reasoner and on individual rights,

at the expense of the community (cf. Snarey & Keljo, 1991).

Kohlberg’s theory of moral atmosphere analysis is a robust answer to his commu-

nitarian and Durkheimian critics. Based in part on Durkheim’s idea that the group is

greater than the sum of its individual members, Kohlberg and his colleagues sought to

characterize the added value of groups that would be the most relevant to moral cog-

nition, development, and behavior. Also, drawing on Durkheim’s view that the unit of

education was the group, Kohlberg concluded that changing the school’s moral culture

would profoundly affect an individual’s moral formation. Kohlberg further speciﬁed that

the most beneﬁcial group for moral development is a democratically governed group,

one that recognizes the rights and responsibilities of each to each other and to the group

as a whole. Thus, a simple focus on the developmental promotion of an individual’s

moral reasoning was not enough; democratic governance would be the kind of collective

socialization that would foster moral ideals, goals, and actions as well as promote moral

reasoning. In addition, the promotion of moral development had to include the col-

lective socialization of moral content. Kohlberg (1985) came to emphasize that moral

development is not only about doing justice; it also includes the social dimension of

a person acting in caring relationships with those attached to each other and with the

group (cf. McDonough, 2005).

Clark Power and Ann Higgins worked with Kohlberg (1989) to construct an array

of complex variables that, taken together, provide a detailed map of a school’s moral

atmosphere or climate. Three of these variables (levels of institutional valuing, stages of

community valuing, and phases of the collective norm) are summarized in Table 5.3. The

ﬁrst two focus on the valuing of the school as a social entity, and the last one focuses on

the phases of commitment to the collective norm.

Kohlberg and his colleagues noted that “the two major units in this analysis, the col-

lective norm and the element of institutional value, correspond to two of Durkheim’s

goals of moral education: discipline and attachment to the group.” They continued:

“Durkheim’s third goal of moral education, autonomy, corresponds most closely to our

analysis of the stage of norms and elements” (p. 116). As Kohlberg (1985) states else-

where, they made use of Durkheim’s concept of the “spirit of discipline” as “respect for

group norms and rules” and “respect for the group; which makes them” (p. 42), and they

made use of his concept of the “spirit of altruism,” which arises from attachment to the

group, as “the willingness to freely give up the ego’s interests, privileges and possessions

Table 5.3 Moral Atmosphere: Levels, Stages, and Phases

Levels of Institutional Valuing Stages of Community Valuing Phases of the Collective Norm

Level 0: Rejection

The school is not valued.

Phase 0: No collective norm exists or

is proposed.

Level 1: Instrumental extrinsic valuing

The school is valued as an institution that helps

individuals to meet their own needs.

Collective Norm Proposal

Phase 1: Individuals propose collective

norms for group acceptance.

Level 2: Enthusiastic identiﬁcation

The school is valued at special moments when

members feel an intense sense of identiﬁcation

with the school.

Stage 2: There is no clear sense of community apart from exchanges

among group members. Community denotes a collection of individuals

who do favors for each other and rely on each other for protection.

Community is valued insofar as it meets the concrete needs of its

members.

Collective Norm Acceptance

Phase 2: Collective norm is accepted

as a group ideal but not agreed to. It is

not an expectation for behavior.

Phase 3: Collective norm is accepted

and agreed to, but it is not (yet) an

expectation for behavior.

Level 3: Spontaneous community

The school is valued as the kind of place in

which members feel a sense of closeness to

others and an inner motivation to help them

and to serve the community as a whole.

Stage 3: The sense of community refers to a set of relationships and

sharing among group members. The group is valued for the friendliness

of its members. The value of the group is equated with the value of its

collective normative expectations.

Collective Norm Expectation

Phase 4: Collective norm is accepted

and expected (naive expectation).

Phase 5: Collective norm is expected

but not followed (disappointed

expectation).

Level 4: Normative community

The school as a community is valued for its own

sake. Community can obligate its members in

special ways, and members can expect others to

uphold group norms and responsibilities.

Stage 4: The community is explicitly valued as an entity distinct from

the relationships among its members. Community membership is

understood in terms of entering into a social contract to respect the

norms and ideals of the group. The community is perceived as an

organic whole composed of interrelated systems that carry on the

functioning of the group.

Collective Norm Enforcement

Phase 6: Collective norm is expected

and upheld through persuasion.

Phase 7: Collective norm is expected

and upheld through reporting.

Source: Adapted from Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg (1989), pp. 117, 119, 130.

Note

The parallel listing of the three variables is not intended to imply a clear theoretical parallelism between moral atmosphere levels, stages, and phases.

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 73

to the group or other members of it” (p. 42). Going beyond Durkheim, however, Kohl-

berg and colleagues also placed more emphasis on rational “autonomy” to avoid abuses

that could result from “immoral use” of the power of the “collectivist model” (1987,

p. 116). Furthermore, Kohlberg (1985) supplemented Durkheim’s concept of “loyalty”

to one’s society with “loyalty to universal principles of justice and responsibility as the

solution to problems” (p. 41).

The net effect of this work was to broaden Kohlberg’s theory to include the concur-

rent processes of moral judgment development and cultural values socialization, without

reducing one to the other. Subsequent empirical research has provided support for the

wisdom of this approach (cf. Narvaez, Getz, Rest, & Thoma, 1999). Within this devel-

opmental-socialization approach to morality, Kohlberg employed three distinct pedago-

gical methods.

KOHLBERG’S THREE METHODS OF MORAL EDUCATION

The center of Kohlberg’s identity was that of a moral educator. Kohlberg (1987) under-

stood that what promoted a person’s structural changes in moral reasoning was having

rich experiences in the social-moral realm. Kohlberg’s pedagogical methods of moral

education promote learning from interaction with adult role models (moral exemplars),

peers and friends (dilemma discussions), and the larger school community (Just Com-

munity schools).

Moral Exemplars

The least acknowledged of Kohlberg’s methods of moral education is his use of moral

exemplars to pedagogically support socialization and promote development. He intuit-

ively understood that observing or learning about those who practiced moral principles

was a more direct method of teaching than any theory could hope to attain. Kohlberg

often demonstrated stage-level reasoning with concrete examples from moral judgment

interviews, thus using moral case examples to teach his moral developmental categories.

For advanced stages, he used public moral exemplars to embody the uncommon Stage 5

and the mercurial Stage 6. Kohlberg also saw public moral exemplars as a critical factor

in public moral education; through their insights and actions, they “draw” our develop-

ment toward higher stages of moral reasoning. Kohlberg held up such mature examples

as moral exemplars.

In Essays on Moral Development: The Psychology of Moral Development (1984,

pp. 486–490), Kohlberg and chapter co-author Ann Higgins offered a 32-year-old woman

named “Joan” as a moral exemplar. Joan’s ability to frame the Heinz dilemma as a dia-

logue of competing claims and her ability to take the role of each person in the dilemma,

in turn, appeared to be an example of post-conventional moral reasoning. This was con-

ﬁrmed for Kohlberg by Joan’s life story. Joan worked with juvenile wards of the court

for a local judge and allowed one of the wards in her care to escape to a better situation

in a halfway house in another state, even to the point of providing her with bus money.

This action was a clear violation of her responsibilities as outlined by the law, and Joan

lost her job. Joan’s words and actions suggest a form of reasoning that posits a universal

respect for the rights and dignity of persons regardless of the dictates of the law.

Going beyond the individual case study, Kohlberg often used a “roll call of the saints”

rhetorical device to list the names of those whom he saw as moral exemplars. Limiting

74 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

our survey to his two-volume collected works on moral philosophy (1981) and moral

psychology (1984), there are six separate such lists with a total of nine moral exem-

plars. Two persons are included in ﬁve of his six lists and were otherwise also cited the

most frequently in his writings: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Socrates. One person was

included in two of the lists: Abraham Lincoln. The remaining six were included in one of

the six lists: Roman humanitarian Marcus Aurelius, pediatrician and Nazi resister Janusz

Korczak, Lord Chancellor Thomas More, Quaker mental health worker Andrea Simpson,

stoic philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and non-violent civil disobedience advocate Henry

David Thoreau. Occasionally, Kohlberg spoke of at least three other individuals in such

a way as to suggest membership in his pantheon of moral exemplars: “Joan,” Supreme

Court Justice William Brennan, and Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

What made these dozen people worthy of being included in Kohlberg’s roll call of moral

exemplars and as valuable models for moral educators today? Perhaps most important,

in addition to their exemplary moral reasoning and empathic moral emotions, they had

taken action to rectify an injustice (e.g., non-violent public dissent, critical speeches,

protest marches). These were acts of public moral education. Morality, without works,

is dead, Kohlberg seemed to believe. Thus, while Kohlberg admired many philosophers

(e.g., Aristotle, Plato, Kant, John Dewey, John Rawls), the only one he elevated to moral

sainthood was Socrates. Although he bestows respectful admiration on several theolo-

gians (Paul Tillich, Martin Luther King, Jr., Teilhard de Chardin) and four Saints of the

Catholic Church (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas More, Saint

Paul), Kohlberg only spoke of two of these seven as moral exemplars: Thomas More and

Martin Luther King, Jr. While discussing the relation between morality, religion, and a

hypothetical Stage 7, Kohlberg acknowledged the work of several well-known and charis-

matic religious leaders, but he only elevated Spinoza, Marcus Aurelius, Andrea Simpson,

and Martin Luther King, Jr. as faith-motivated moral exemplars, which suggests that his

positive regard for them had little to do with religious charisma and everything to do

with how they lived out their moral principles (cf. Hart & Atkins, 2004).

Finally, Kohlberg always understood that moral exemplars were still ﬂawed human

beings and products of their time. For example, one of the central undertakings for many

of his exemplars was moral education against racism (e.g., Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther

King, Jr., Janusz Korczak). Nevertheless, while discussing the Piaget-like phenomena of

historical “decalage” on the subject of enlightenment regarding slavery, Kohlberg notes

that “Socrates was more accepting of slavery than was Lincoln, who was more accepting

of it than King,” who was not accepting of it at all (1981, p. 129). Inevitably, of course, a

similar historical partiality was engendered in Kohlberg as a product of his own times.

In terms of race and gender, his roll call of exemplars included one black man, two white

women, and nine white men. Nevertheless, although he exhibited partiality, his primary

criteria for being considered an exemplar for moral education rings true because they

lived out their mature moral reasoning and empathy through moral behavior and cou-

rageous action that threatened the status quo. Consequently, most faced penalties and

some died for their moral stance.

Experienced moral educators know that lecture descriptions of moral stages take on

new relevance when illustrated with examples “ripped from the headlines,” so to speak,

or when a moral exemplar makes a guest visit to a class session to talk about why they

care (cf. Vozzola, 1996). Publications on moral exemplars also can be useful in moral

education. Colby and Damon (1992) provide portraits of 23 contemporary lives of moral

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 75

commitment and courageous leadership. Siddle-Walker and Snarey (2004) make use of

six moral exemplars, three children and three adults, who embody African-American

care-and-justice ethics.

Dilemma Discussions

About a decade after Kohlberg (1958) proposed his moral stage model, the ﬁrst genuine

Kohlbergian venture into moral education began with an experiment by Kohlberg’s doc-

toral student, Moshe Blatt, who attempted to facilitate moral stage development among

sixth-grade students through weekly classroom discussions of hypothetical moral dilem-

mas (cf. Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975). Blatt found that over one-third of the students in the

experimental group advanced in stage of moral development during the year, whereas

few of the students in a control group exhibited any stage change.

Subsequently, Kohlberg and his colleagues implemented this method by integrating

dilemma discussions into the curriculum of school classes on the humanities (e.g., liter-

ature) and social studies (e.g., history). To prepare teachers, Kohlberg and colleagues

held workshops and wrote about how to lead moral dilemma discussions (e.g., Fenton

& Kohlberg, 1976; Kohlberg & Lickona, 1987). Some of the questions were quite similar

to those used in a standard moral judgment interview; that is, they asked students to

clarify their reasoning about “why” they held a certain position. Other questions asked

students to make their meaning clear, ensure a shared understanding, or promote peer

interaction, especially perspective-taking (cf. Selman, 1971). Additionally, attention was

given to questions designed to promote Socratic discussion. Fritz Oser (1992) advanced

a more group-centered method of “discourse ethics” and Georg Lind (2007) attended

to the importance of the overall structure and organization of a moral dilemma

discussion.

The major assumption of promoting moral dilemma discussions in classrooms and

peer groups is that “interactive exchanges with peers” will “speed up the natural develop-

ment of moral judgment” (Rest & Thoma, 1986, p. 59). Samuelson (2007), for instance,

demonstrated that a discussion-based curriculum using ﬁlm clips containing moral

dilemmas from popular Hollywood ﬁlms produced a statistically signiﬁcant improve-

ment in the degree to which students endorsed higher stage moral reasoning compared

to those who did not participate. Beyond statistical signiﬁcance, however, Kohlberg asked,

how psychologically signiﬁcant are the gains promoted by participation in dilemma dis-

cussions? Subsequent comparison studies of approaches to moral education, and several

reviews of moral education research and programs using moral dilemmas, have pro-

vided decisive evaluations.

The landmark meta-analysis of 55 studies by Schlaeﬂi, Rest, and Thoma (1985) showed

that the dilemma discussion approach produces moderate and signiﬁcant educational

effects on moral development, whereas other types of intervention programs produce

smaller effects, and individual academic courses in the humanities produce even weaker

effects. Higgins’ review (1980) drew similar but more qualitative conclusions.

The most powerful interventions for stimulating moral stage change are those that

involve discussions of real [rather than hypothetical] problems and situations occur-

ring in natural groups, whether the family or classroom in which all participants are

empowered to have a say in the discussion.

(p. 96)

76 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

This ﬁnding should alert teachers and professors that many unexpected critical inci-

dents in teaching involve a real moral dilemma and often provide an opportunity to

engage in a real-life moral dilemma discussion.

Dilemma discussions are also used in formal courses on ethics. DeHaan and colleagues

(1997) compared the effectiveness of three approaches to ethics education among high

school students by enrolling students in one of four high school classes: an introduc-

tory ethics class, a blended economics-ethics class, a role-model ethics class taught by

graduate students, and a non-ethics comparison class. The ﬁrst two classes used dilemma

discussions, and all groups were assessed with pre- and post-test measures of moral

reasoning, moral emotions, and moral behavior. The clearest positive pattern evident

in the data was that the integrated economics-ethics class and the introductory ethics

class showed statistically signiﬁcant gains in socio-moral reﬂection maturity, principled

moral reasoning, and moral behavior. Similar students in the comparison group and the

role-model ethics class showed no such advances. These ﬁndings again suggest that high

school students have the most to gain when teachers explicitly draw their students’ atten-

tion to the ethical issues inherent in their respective courses and integrate the discussion

of relevant moral dilemmas into their current courses.

It is not just the method or experience of moral dilemma discussion that has an impact

on its efﬁcacy in moral development, but also the peer context. Kohlberg hypothesized

that the ideal situation for advancement in moral reasoning was to be involved in a dis-

cussion with another person who reasoned at a level one stage higher (+1) than one’s

own level. Blatt and Kohlberg (1975) engaged a group whose participants expressed

reasoning at various levels in a dilemma discussion. The experimenter then chose the

argument that was one stage above the level of most of the participants and supported

it, emphasizing its strengths and encouraging participants to engage in thinking along

these lines. This method led to signiﬁcant increases in moral maturity scores. In a review

of the effectiveness of moral development interventions using the plus-one strategy with

moral dilemma discussions, Enright, Lapsley, Harris, and Schawver (2001) established

that most (10 of 13 interventions) produced signiﬁcant gains in moral reasoning. Those

interventions in which a signiﬁcant difference did not occur tended to be of shorter

duration (e.g., one to six sessions). Although the plus-one strategy has good support in

the literature, other strategies have also proven effective. Walker’s (1982) study of middle

school students found a signiﬁcant effect on moral reasoning with exposure to persons

who reasoned two stages above the subjects, whereas Berkowitz, Gibbs, and Broughton’s

(1980) study of college students found the ideal stage differential was at a third (+1/3)

of a stage for dialogues between two peers. Overall, these studies support the general

concept of the “zone of proximal development” that posits that children learn best from

a person who performs at one level just above the child’s level (Walker & Taylor, 1991).

Although most studies of moral development interventions take place in the school

setting, much of a child’s moral development takes place at home. Walker and Taylor

(1991) investigated the role of dilemma discussions between parent and child. They

showed that children with signiﬁcant gains in moral reasoning over time had parents

that adjusted their level of moral reasoning to ﬁt the child’s. In other words, it is not high

moral reasoning in parents that predicts change in the child; rather it is parents who can

accommodate their reasoning to the child’s level who will have the most effect. They also

found that hypothetical dilemmas were not predictive of children’s subsequent moral

development, but that “real-life” moral dilemmas from the experience of the child had

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 77

the greatest impact, supporting Higgins’ (1980) prior conclusion. Moreover, Walker and

Taylor found that the most effective type of communication in moral dilemma discus-

sions was representational, which included such behaviors as restating the child’s rea-

soning, asking for the child’s opinion, asking questions of clariﬁcation, and checking for

understanding. This, combined with presentation of moral reasoning at approximately

one stage above the child’s pre-intervention stage score, predicted the greatest gains in

the child’s moral reasoning.

Ann Kruger (1992, 1993), like Piaget, reasoned that the greater symmetry of know-

ledge and power in the peer dyads compared to the adult/child dyads produced the

freedom to entertain multiple perspectives, which resulted in measurable development

in moral reasoning. Kruger’s (1992) investigation of moral dilemmas included young

girls’ discussions both with their peers and with their mothers. She showed that peer

discussions of moral dilemmas result in greater improvement in moral reasoning than

do discussions between children and adults.

From these studies we can draw several conclusions:

1. Dilemma discussion is a useful method for moral development education.

2. Real-life dilemmas, perhaps especially those drawn from personal experience,

are more efﬁcacious for moral development than are hypothetical dilemmas.

3. There is a zone of proximal development in which dilemma discussions will

most advance moral development.

4. Peers are the best teachers or conversation partners. Dilemma or problem-situ-

ation based discussions continue to be the most widely used method of moral

education today.

Just Community Schools

In 1973, Kohlberg’s thinking about moral education within schools broke new ground

when he recognized a limitation of the moral dilemma discussion method. Although it

can change students (slowly), it does not take into account the moral atmosphere of the

social context. As Kohlberg put it, the school is a context “in which one cannot wait until

children reach [Stage 5 of moral development] to deal directly with moral behavior”

(1978, p. 15). However, Kohlberg now faced a pedagogical dilemma: how to teach moral

values without imposing them on children or compromising their moral autonomy. In

addition, because children often reason within one stage of each other and their inter-

action provides optimal opportunities to advance moral reasoning, the dilemma then

becomes how to help children teach each other universal moral values.

Kohlberg had theorized that this dilemma was solvable because the end principles

found in higher stages (4, 5, and 6) of reasoning, such as reciprocity, respect, and justice,

were present in some elementary form from Stage 1 onwards (Kohlberg, 1980). His plan

for developing children’s moral maturity was for the teacher to promote the develop-

ment of the children’s native sense of fairness and, in so doing, prepare them to better

understand and then appropriate the principle of justice toward which moral develop-

ment reaches. The goal was to achieve a “balance [of] ‘justice’ and ‘community’; to intro-

duce the powerful appeal of the collective while both protecting the rights of individual

students and promoting their moral growth” (Power et al., 1989, p. 53). His bold and

daring approach was deceptively simple—a return to the progressive ideal of educational

democracy but within a communitarian mode (cf. Dewey, 1916).

78 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

Kohlberg founded the ﬁrst Just Community school in the spring of 1974. He had

received funding to train high school teachers in developmental moral education. At

the same time in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, plans for a new alternative high

school were under way and Kohlberg was invited to consult in its planning. Students,

parents, teachers, and Kohlberg met together to design the new school. The end result

was the Cluster School, which was governed by the following principles:

1. The school would be governed by direct democracy. All major issues would be

discussed and decided at a weekly community meeting at which all members

(students and teachers) would have one vote.

2. There would be, in addition, a number of standing committees to be ﬁlled by

students, teachers, and parents.

3. A social contract would be drawn between members which would deﬁne every-

one’s rights and responsibilities.

4. Students and teachers would have the same basic rights, including freedom of

expression, respect of others, and freedom from physical or verbal harm.

The keystone of the Just Community approach was the weekly community meeting

(aka, Town Meeting), a gathering of students and staff to decide school policies and

practices that dealt with issues of fairness and community. The advisor and standing

committee groups met on the day before the community meeting. Each advisory group

consisted of one of the ﬁve teachers and a ﬁfth of the students. These small group meet-

ings set the stage for the larger community meetings as well as provided an opportunity

for students and their advisors to get to know each other and share more personal con-

cerns than could be dealt with in the larger meeting. The agenda for the community

meeting would be discussed, and the small group would often debate the issues and try

to achieve consensus or agreement on majority and minority proposals to bring to the

next day’s meeting.

All of these meetings functioned as a context for moral discussion and a place to

build community. The general aim was for students to achieve a sense of community

solidarity—to create a “moral atmosphere”—through the practice of democratic gov-

ernance (i.e., coming to fair decisions, carrying out these decisions, and, as necessary,

to democratically changing their decisions). One aspect of the Just Community educa-

tor’s role was similar to that of a youth leader, that is, to function both as a socializer,

in the manner of Durkheim, and as a facilitator, in the manner of Piaget. The sense of

group solidarity allowed the peer group to function as a moral authority for its members’

behavior. Direct participatory democracy, furthermore, functions to protect the rights of

the student and to limit the power of group solidarity to coerce conformity, in order to

maintain the possibility for alternative conceptions of the good to be voiced.

The role of the teacher was perhaps as important as the students’ peers. In typical

moral dilemma discussions in a regular classroom, teachers primarily functioned as

facilitators, but in the new Just Community schools, teachers also had to function as

advocates for moral content: justice and community values (Kohlberg & Selman, 1972;

Selman, 2003). Thus, the teachers served as moral leaders by advocating their own posi-

tions within the constraints of one person, one vote, and by being invested in “what”

students decided to do and “why” they decided to do it (Oser & Renold, 2006).

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas s 79

Later Kohlberg and his colleagues applied the Just Community approach at the subur-

ban Scarsdale Alternative High School in Westchester County, New York, an upper- and

upper-middle-class school and at the Brookline High School, Brookline, Massachusetts,

a semi-urban middle-class school-within-a-school (cf. Mosher, Kenny, & Garrod, 1994).

Finally, toward the end of his life, Kohlberg and his colleagues implemented three Just

Community programs in New York City; two in one of the ﬁve worst city schools and

one in an examination school with high-performing students (see Higgins, 1989). Several

other schools have adopted the principles of Just Community schools, at least in part, in

order to promote moral development (see Howard-Hamilton, 1995).

Reactions to the idea of “the adolescent as citizen” often create the same initial

response as the idea of “the child as philosopher.” What “kind of quixotic oxymoron” is

this? (Mosher, 1992, p. 179). Educational researchers also have asked; does Kohlberg’s Just

Community approach actually promote the moral reasoning of students and the moral

atmosphere of schools? The answer is a qualiﬁed “yes,” based on a comparative analysis

of the ﬁrst three Just Community schools (cf. Mosher et al., 1994; Power et al., 1989). The

students in each of the three Just Community schools (i.e., Cambridge, Brookline, and

Scarsdale) scored signiﬁcantly higher than their contemporaries attending the parallel or

parent high schools on all measures of moral atmosphere, including the level of institu-

tional valuing, stage of community valuing, and phase of collective norm. The results on

individual moral judgment were also in the expected direction; the average moral stage

scores for the students in the Just Community programs were signiﬁcantly higher than

for the students in their companion traditional high schools. The stage gains were smaller

than expected, but still respectable (i.e., at two- and three-year longitudinal follow-up

interviews, students at the Cluster School showed that they gained, on average, about a

half-stage in moral development). It is also noteworthy that the evaluation studies found

no statistically signiﬁcant gender differences in any of the analyses of moral culture or

moral stage variables. Nevertheless, it also is clear that future Just Community interven-

tions need to provide for a greater degree of culturally sensitive adaptation and cultural

responsiveness when approaching cross-class, cross-race, or cross-cultural school set-

tings, each with its own distinctive sociocultural history, strengths, and needs (cf. Nucci,

2001; Vozzola & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2000). At the minimum, as Noddings (1992) has

noted, “we respond most effectively [as caring persons] when we understand the other’s

needs and the history of this need” (p. 23).

In sum, the net effect of the Just Community model of moral education was to extend

Kohlberg’s theory from the moral reasoning of individuals to the moral culture of com-

munities (cf. Oser, Althof, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008). Kohlberg’s Just Community

approach to moral education incorporates both socialization and developmental per-

spectives and provides a way for teachers and administrators to embody justice and care

in their treatment of students and each other and a way for students to develop these

moral values. In the end, the Just Community approach also expanded our understand-

ing of conventional moral reasoning (stages 3 and 4). Students reasoning at so-called

conformist levels were shown to be able to “understand moral concepts” in ways that

allow them to “scrutinize, critique, resist, or attempt to change the practices, laws, or

arrangements of their” high school society (Turiel, 2002, p. 105).

80 s J. Snarey and P.L. Samuelson

WHAT KOHLBERG TAUGHT US

Kohlberg opened the eyes of psychologists and educators to the fact that people’s moral

thinking changes as they mature, and that these changes follow predictable stages of

development as they grow older. While his stage model is one of his greatest contri-

butions to moral psychology, Kohlberg also contributed models of moral types, as well

as moral cultural atmosphere levels, which have made the picture of human moral devel-

opment more complete. Kohlberg’s models of moral development, alone, would have

been a remarkable achievement. But he was, at heart, a dedicated educator, committed

to seeing theory bear fruit, and so he developed methods of moral education that would

promote moral development and mature character. Kohlberg’s three-pronged approach

to moral education—moral exemplars, moral dilemma discussions, and Just Community

schools—collectively transcend the dichotomy of socialization versus development. His

groundbreaking approach to moral education, similarly, taught that we must pay equal

and concurrent attention to the moral reasoning development of the individual and the

moral cultural development of the community. Both play equally important roles in the

development of morality.

Additionally, Kohlberg demonstrated a genuine interest in views of his critics and

a willingness to engage new approaches to moral cognition, development, and educa-

tion. His example remains especially relevant today because the cognitive-developmental

tradition is currently characterized by a spirit of revisionism. This pluralism is to be

valued because we now understand that “moral functioning is inherently multifaceted”

(Walker, 2004, p. 547). Taking our cue from Kohlberg’s openness, it is likely that we have

much to gain from positive engagement with ongoing constructive critiques of the cog-

nitive-developmental tradition. Many of the critics began their theoretical work during

Kohlberg’s lifetime (1927–1987) but, during the post-Kohlberg decades, theoretical

innovations accelerated, alternative measures of theoretical constructs were perfected,

and corresponding methods of moral education have been constructed (cf. Arnold,

2000). A number of these alternatives and innovations are reﬂected in the chapters in

this handbook. These innovations demonstrate the ﬁeld’s current spirit of expansion

and pluralistic revisionism. Kohlberg would be the ﬁrst to remind us, of course, that

there is room at the table for everyone.

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MORAL SELF-IDENTITY AS THE AIM OF EDUCATION

Daniel Lapsley and Paul C. Stey

INTRODUCTION

The ambitions that most parents have for their children naturally include the develop-

ment of important moral dispositions. Most parents want to raise children to become

persons of a certain kind, persons who possess traits that are desirable and praiseworthy,

whose personalities are imbued with a strong ethical compass. In situations of radical

choice we hope that our children do the right thing for the right reason, even when faced

with strong inclinations to do otherwise. Moreover, other socialization agents and insti-

tutions share this goal. For example, the moral formation of children is one of the foun-

dational goals of formal education (Dewey, 1909; Bryk, 1988; Goodlad, 1992; Goodman

& Lesnick, 2001; McClellan, 1999) and there is increasing recognition that neighbor-

hoods and communities play critical roles for inducting children into the moral and civic

norms that govern human social life (Eccles & Gootman, 2002; Flanagan, Cumsille, Gill

& Gallay, 2007).

Yet how are we to understand the moral dimensions of personality? When our

aspiration is to raise children of “a certain kind,” what does this mean? Historically, the

work of developmental and educational scientists has coalesced around two options.

One option draws upon Aristotelian resources to assert that moral formation is a

matter of character development; it is a matter of developing those dispositions that

allow one to live well the life that is good for one to live. We ﬂourish as persons, in

other words, when we are in possession of the virtues. A second option draws upon

Kantian resources to assert that moral formation is a matter of cognitive development;

it is a matter of developing sophisticated deliberative competence to resolve the dilem-

matic features of our lives but in a way compatible with the “moral point of view.” Our

behavior is distinctly moral, under this view, when it conforms to the duties required

by the moral law, or, alternatively, when behavior is undertaken for explicit moral

reasons.

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 85

The character and cognitive developmental options are associated with various educa-

tional strategies that are discussed in a number of chapters in this volume and elsewhere

(e.g., Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Turiel, 2006). In this chapter we describe a third option

that attempts to frame the moral qualities of persons in terms of the psychological lit-

eratures on selfhood and identity. These constructs have a long history in psychology,

and are variously understood by different research paradigms (e.g., Harter, 2012; Leary

& Tangney, 2003). Hence their application to the moral domain is by no means straight-

forward (Blasi, 2004). Yet, for all the peril, these constructs also hold out considerable

promise for understanding the dispositional and motivational bases of moral behavior

(Blasi, 2005; Hardy & Carlo, 2005). Moreover, an appeal to self and identity opens up

the study of moral development and education to the theoretical and methodological

resources of other domains of psychological science, thereby increasing the prospect of

our improving the aim of moral education with powerful integrative frameworks.

In the next section we attempt to frame the contemporary appeal of moral self-identity

by situating it within the problematic of the character and cognitive developmental

alternatives noted earlier. As we will see neither alternative has much use for the language

of selfhood or identity, at least in their traditional, unvarnished formulation, but that a

number of theoretical and empirical advances have converged to raise its proﬁle. Five

theoretical approaches to moral self-identity will then be described, followed by an

account of their educational implications. We will conclude with a survey of “doubts

and futures”—conceptual doubts about the coherence of moral self-identity as a useful

construct in moral psychology, and possible futures for a moral self-identity research

program.

SITUATING MORAL SELF-IDENTITY

The increasing prominence of moral self-identity in developmental psychology (e.g.,

Blasi, 1993; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004a) is reﬂected also by recent trends in contemporary

ethics that draw a close connection between personal and moral considerations (Taylor,

1989). As Taylor put it, “being a self is inseparable from existing in a space of moral

issues” (p. 112). Of course, the recent prominence of the moral self should not imply

that it was ever completely absent from ethical theory (Bergman, 2005). The Aristote-

lian ethical tradition, for example, with its emphasis on virtues, is thought particularly

friendly to the moral dimensions of selfhood (Punzo, 1996). Moreover, Carr (2001) asso-

ciates Kant’s moral theory with the view that moral agency is crucial to what it means

to be a person. As Carr put it, “although there are other senses in which human agents

may be regarded as persons, the most signiﬁcant sense in which they are persons is that

in which they are moral agents” (p. 82).

THEORIES OF SELF-IDENTITY

Orienting Frameworks

No one has done more than Augusto Blasi to elevate the importance of moral self-identity

for understanding moral behavior. According to Blasi (1984), moral self-identity is con-

structed on the basis of moral commitments. The moral person is one for whom moral

categories or moral notions are central, essential, and important to self-understanding.

Moral commitments cut deeply to the core of what and who they are as persons. But

86 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

not everyone constructs the self by reference to moral categories. For some individuals

moral considerations do not penetrate their understanding of who they are as persons;

nor inﬂuence their outlook on important issues; nor “come to mind” when faced with

the innumerable transactions of daily life. Some have only a glancing acquaintance with

morality but choose to deﬁne the self by reference to other priorities; or else incorporate

morality into their personality in different degrees; or emphasize some moral considera-

tions (“justice”) but not others (“caring”).

Hence moral identity is a dimension of individual differences, which is to say, it is

a way of talking about personality. One has a moral identity to the extent that moral

notions, such as being good, being just, compassionate, or fair, is judged to be central,

essential, and important to one’s self-understanding. One has a moral identity when one

strives to keep faith with identity-deﬁning moral commitments; and when moral claims

stake out the very terms of reference for the sort of person one claims to be.

Blasi’s (1984) account of moral identity is not far from his Self Model of moral

action. For example, if moral considerations are crucial to the essential self, then self-

integrity will hinge on whether one is self-consistent in action. And failing to act in a

way that is self-consistent with what is central, essential, and important to one’s moral

identity is to risk self-betrayal. In more recent writings Blasi has reﬂected on how and

why people come to care about the self and its projects and desires (Blasi, 2004). He has

also proposed a psychological account of moral character, and outlined some important

developmental considerations (Blasi, 2005).

Moral Character. One’s moral character presumably is comprised of virtues. But it is

useful, on Blasi’s (2005) view, to distinguish higher- and lower-order virtues. Lower-order

virtues are the many speciﬁc predispositions that show up in lists of valued traits favored

by character educators including, for example, empathy, compassion, fairness, honesty,

generosity, kindness, diligence, and so on. Typically these lists describe predispositions to

respond in certain ways in highly speciﬁc situations. It is easy to generate these “bags of

virtue” (as Kohlberg derisively called them). Indeed, as Blasi (2005) put it, “one immedi-

ately observes that the lists frequently differ from each other, are invariably long, and can be

easily extended, and are largely unsystematic” (p. 70). In contrast, higher-order traits have

greater generality and quite possibly apply across many situations.

Two clusters of higher-order traits are distinguished. Blasi (2005) calls one cluster

“willpower” (or, alternatively, self-control). Willpower as self-control is a toolbox of

skills that permit self-regulation in problem-solving. Breaking down problems, goal-

setting, focusing attention, avoiding distractions, resisting temptation, staying on task,

persevering with determination and self-discipline—these are the skills of willpower.

The second cluster of higher-order traits are organized around the notion of “integrity,”

which refers to internal self-consistency. Being a person of one’s word, being transparent

to oneself, being responsible, self-accountable, sincere, resistant to self-deception—these

are the dispositions of integrity. Integrity is felt as responsibility when we constrain the

self with intentional acts of self-control in the pursuit of our moral aims. Integrity is felt

as identity when we imbue the construction of self-meaning with moral desires. When

constructed in this way living out one’s moral commitments does not feel like a choice

but is felt instead as a matter of self-necessity. It is rather like Martin Luther at the Diet

of Worms: “Here I stand; I can do no other.”

This suggests that self-control and integrity are morally neutral but take on signiﬁ-

cance for moral character only when they are attached to moral desires. Our self-control

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 87

and integrity are moralized by our desire to keep faith with morality. Here Blasi (2005)

appeals to Frankfurt’s (1971) notion of effective will and second-order volitions. To want

to have certain moral desires (“second-order desires”), and to have these desires effect-

ively willed for the self (“second-order volitions”), is the hallmark of moral character.

Moral character describes persons but not wantons. But not all persons possess moral

character either, unless they will moral desires as second-order volitions.

Inﬂuence of Blasian Identity. Blasi’s writings on moral identity, personality, and char-

acter established the terms of reference for a renewed examination of self and identity

in the moral domain. His eloquent, meditative defense of the subjective self-as-agent in

psychological science, his insistence on the rational, intentional nature of distinctly moral

functioning, and his integration of self and identity with moral rationality and respons-

ibility is a singular, inﬂuential achievement. Moreover, Blasi has returned long-forgotten

concepts to the vocabulary of modern psychology, including desire, will, and volition;

and added new concepts, such as self-appropriation and wholeheartedness. Although the

most searching of his theoretical claims have yet to be translated into sustained empirical

research, there are lines of research that do encourage the general thrust of his work.

For example, moral identity is used to explain the motivation of individuals who shel-

tered Jews during the Nazi Holocaust (Monroe, 2003). The study of “moral exemplars”—

adults whose lives are marked by extraordinary moral commitment—reveal a sense of

self that is aligned with moral goals, and moral action undertaken as a matter of felt

necessity rather than as a product of effortful deliberation (Colby & Damon, 1992).

Similar ﬁndings are reported in studies of youth. In one study adolescents who were

nominated by community organizations for their uncommon prosocial commitment

(“care exemplars”) were more likely to include moral goals and moral traits in their self-

descriptions than were matched comparison adolescents (Hart & Fegley, 1995; Reimer,

2003). Moral exemplars show more progress in adult identity development (Matsuba &

Walker, 2004), and report self-conceptions that are replete with agentic themes, ideo-

logical depth and complexity (Matsuba & Walker, 2005). Moreover, identity integration

and moral reasoning appear to be strongly correlated constructs (Maclean, Walker, &

Matsuba, 2004).

There are, of course, other approaches to moral self-identity. Indeed, the moral exem-

plar studies trade mostly on Blasi’s insight that a self constructed on moral ideals will

show a distinctive behavioral proﬁle. Although there is often broad compatibility with

Blasi’s framework, alternative approaches to moral identity have starting points other

than the subjective self-as-agent, and invoke processes that are more social-cognitive

(Aquino & Reed, 2002; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004b), personological (Walker, 1999), com-

munitarian (Power, 2004), and contextual (Hart, 2005; Hart, Atkins, & Ford, 1998). A

brief summary of these approaches is in order.

Alternative Approaches to Moral Identity

Moral Self in Community. The construction of the moral self should not be thought of as

an individual achievement, but may have strong communitarian features. For example,

in a recent study Pratt, Hunsberger, Pancer, and Alistat (2003), showed that community

involvement was a strong predictor of young adults’ abilities to construct the moral self

ideal. In this study, the authors constructed a moral self-ideal index that was based on

participants’ endorsement of a set of six personal qualities (trustworthy, honest, fair,

just, care, shows integrity, good citizen). At age 19, participants who endorsed a high

88 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

moral self-ideal were also more likely to endorse the “self-transcendent” values of “uni-

versalism” and “benevolence.” Moreover, endorsement of each of the six moral qualities

predicted an index of involvement in community activities.

Yet longitudinal analysis revealed that community involvement led to subsequent

endorsement of a moral self-ideal rather than the other way round. Moral self-ideal did

not lead to community engagement but was its result. Moral self-ideal is a precipitate

of good works and not its cause. It is a dependent variable. If true this suggests that the

best way to inﬂuence attitudes and values is to ﬁrst change behavior—in this case in the

direction of greater community involvement (Pancer & Pratt, 1999). According to Pratt

and colleagues (2003) adolescents’ community involvement leads to the development of

a sense of identity characterized by a greater emphasis on moral and prosocial values.

Power (2004) also argues that the community dimension is essential for understand-

ing the moral self. In his view, “The self does not experience a sense of obligation or

responsibility to act in isolation but with others within a cultural setting” (p. 52). Hence

moral self-identity is a matter of group identiﬁcation and shared commitment to its

value-laden norms. The moral self identiﬁes with the community by speaking on behalf

of its shared norms and by taking on its obligations as binding on the self.

Power (2004) uses Blasi’s (1988) account of identity types (identity observed, iden-

tity managed, identity constructed) as a template for understanding how a person might

identify with a community by speaking on behalf of its norms. In an early phase, one

simply acknowledges that one is a member of a group and is bound thereby to group

norms (identity observed). Then, one speaks up more actively in defense of a group

norm, and in urging the community to abide by its commitments (identity managed).

Finally, one takes “legislative responsibility for constructing group norms” (p. 55; iden-

tity constructed). Power (2004) argues that the democratic process challenges members

to “appropriate” community group membership into one’s personal identity.

A “Systems” Model. According to Hart (2005) identity is a crucial construct for at least

two reasons. First, it helps us understand not only moral exemplars, but also instances of

moral calamity, such as the Rwandan genocide that saw identity used as a lever for the

destruction of Tutsis by Hutus (see also Moshman, 2004). Second, it is a bridge construct

between philosophical conceptions of the moral life and certain empirical ﬁndings of

psychological research. For example, it is a commonplace in ethical theory to assert that

moral freedom is grounded by our rational capacity to discern options, make decision,

and justify actions. On this account a behavior has no particular moral status unless it is

motivated by an explicit moral judgment, one that is reached by means of an effortful,

deliberative decision-making calculus.

Yet this image of moral agency collides with empirical research that shows that much

of human decision-making is not like this at all; and that, indeed, much social behavior is

under “nonconscious control” (Bargh, 2005). Hart (2005) asserts that moral psychology

cannot evade ﬁndings like these, yet the deliberative quality of moral life also cannot be

dispensed with. In his view the identity construct is one “in which occasional conscious

moral deliberations can be integrated with action plans, emotions and the structures of

life” (Hart, 2005, p. 172), which we take to mean are largely outside of consciousness.

According to Hart (2005), identity includes the ability to take oneself as an object of

reﬂection, and to make an emotional investment in some aspects of the self. Identity is

also the felt experience of continuity and sameness over time and place; and a sense of

integration of self attributes. Identity requires the participation of others. It is forged in

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 89

the heat of relational commitments, within webs of interlocution (Taylor, 1989), where

social expectations inﬂuence which aspects of the self become important, essential, and

central to one’s identity. Finally, identity is a moment of strong evaluation (Taylor, 1989)

that helps us discern answers to the traditional questions of ethics (“What should I do?”

“What sort of person should I become?”).

But Hart’s model is distinctive for its account of the factors that inﬂuence moral iden-

tity formation. Five factors are noted, arrayed into two groups of inﬂuence. The ﬁrst

group is composed of 1) enduring dispositional and 2) social (including family, culture,

social class) characteristics that change slowly and are probably beyond the volitional

control of the developing child. As Hart (2005, p. 179) put it, “Enduring personality

characteristics, one’s family, one’s culture and location in a social structure, all shape

moral life.” But these things are beyond the control of the child. Children do not select

their personality traits; they do not select their home environments or neighborhood,

though these settings will inﬂuence the contour of their moral formation. As a result,

there is a certain moral luck (Nagel, 1979; Williams, 1982) involved in the way one’s

moral life goes, and a certain fragility of goodness (Nussbaum, 1986), too, depending on

the favorability of one’s ecological circumstances—including the goodness of ﬁt between

one’s enduring personality dispositions and the contextual settings of development.

The second group of inﬂuence includes 3) moral judgment and attitudes, 4) the sense

of self (including commitment to ideals), and 5) opportunities for moral action. These

factors are closer to the volitional control of the agent, and introduce more malleability

and plasticity in moral identity formation. Moreover, they are thought to mediate the

link between the ﬁrst group (personality and social) and moral identity formation and

other adaptive outcomes.

Hart and his colleagues have reported a number of studies that document key fea-

tures of the model. One study (Hart, Atkins, & Fegley, 2003) showed that moral identity

(as reﬂected in voluntary community activity) has deep roots in childhood person-

ality. In this study adolescents whose personality proﬁle was judged “resilient” as chil-

dren were more likely to be engaged in the voluntary community than were teens who

had under-controlled or over-controlled personality types as children. Social structure

also inﬂuences children’s and adolescents’ voluntary community service. For example,

neighborhoods characterized by poverty and child-saturated environments (a large pro-

portion of the population composed of children and adolescents) are associated with

depressed levels of volunteering (Hart, Atkins, Markey, & Youniss, 2004).

More recently Hart and Matsuba (2009) documented a relation between the degree

of child saturation in a community and the tendency of young adolescents to participate

in volunteer activities. In child-saturated communities with high poverty adolescents are

less likely to volunteer, but in communities with less poverty child saturation is associ-

ated with greater volunteer activities. Thus, level of poverty moderates the relationship

between child saturation in a community and volunteer activities.

Hart et al. (2003) have also shown how social opportunities are associated with

increased youth participation in community service. In a recent study the presence of

social institutional structures (church, community meetings), along with a “helping

identity,” predicted voluntary community service in a nationally representative sample

of adults (Matsuba, Hart, & Atkins, 2007). Indeed, attachment to institutional groups

seems to be a powerful way of facilitating youth involvement in community service (Hart

et al., 1998), particularly attachment to school (Atkins, Hart, & Donnelly, 2004).

90 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

Hart’s (2005) model is the closest thing we have to a developmental systems per-

spective on moral identity formation; and one implication of an ecological systems

perspective is the expectation of relative plasticity in development (Lerner, 2006). Not

surprisingly, then, Hart’s model suggests that there is plasticity in moral identity devel-

opment. Moral identity is open to revision across the lifecourse, particularly when one

is given opportunities for moral action. This underscores the importance of providing

youth with opportunities for service learning and community service (Hart, 2005).

Self-Importance of Moral Identity. Aquino and Reed’s (2002) account of moral iden-

tity shares some features in common with Blasi’s model. They assume, for example, that

moral identity is a dimension of individual differences. Moral identity may be just one

of several social identities that one might value, and there are individual differences in

the centrality of morality in people’s self-deﬁnition. Moreover, they assume that moral

identity is a key mechanism by which moral judgments and ideals are translated into

action.

But Aquino and Reed (2002) also diverge from Blasi’s model in signiﬁcant ways. For

one thing, they avail themselves of the theoretical resources (and experimental meth-

odologies) of social cognitive approaches to personality, an option that Blasi disfavors.

Social cognitive theory assumes, for example, that the activation of mental representa-

tions of the self is critical for social information-processing. Hence, they deﬁne moral

identity in terms of the availability and accessibility of moral schemes (following Lapsley

and Lasky, 2002). On this view a person with a moral identity is one for whom moral

schemas are chronically accessible, readily primed, and easily activated for appraising the

social landscape (Aquino, Reed, Thau, & Freeman, 2007).

Aquino and Reed (2002) also adopt a trait-speciﬁc approach to moral identity. They

deﬁne moral identity as a self-conception that is organized around speciﬁc moral traits

(e.g., caring, compassionate, fair, friendly, generous, helpful, hardworking, honest, kind).

These traits then serve as “salience induction stimuli” (in the manner of spreading acti-

vation effects) to activate a person’s moral identity when rating the self-importance of

these traits on a moral identity instrument. Factor analysis of this instrument revealed

two factors: a Symbolization factor (the degree to which the traits are reﬂected in one’s

public actions); and an Internalization factor (the degree to which these moral traits are

central to one’s self-concept). In some studies these nine traits are used in an experi-

mental manipulation to prime the accessibility of moral identity.

Research in this paradigm has yielded highly interesting results. For example, Aquino

and Reed (2002) showed that both dimensions were signiﬁcant predictors of spon-

taneous moral self-concept and self-reported volunteering, but that internalization

showed the stronger relation to actual donating behavior and moral reasoning. In sub-

sequent research individuals with a strong internalized moral identity reported a stronger

moral obligation to help and share resources with outgroups; to perceive the worthiness

of coming to their aid; and to prefer outgroups in actual donating behavior (Reed &

Aquino, 2003). Similarly, Reed, Aquino, and Levy (2007) showed that individuals for

whom moral identity is very important prefer to donate their personal time for charit-

able causes rather than donate money. They also showed that while individuals with high

organizational status may prefer to donate money to charity than time, this tendency was

considerably weaker among individuals with strongly-important moral identity.

In addition, research shows that moral identity appears to neutralize the effectiveness

of moral disengagement strategies (mechanisms that allow us to support or perpetrate

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 91

doing harm to others while protecting our self-image and self-esteem). When the moral

self is highly important to one’s identity, it undermines the effectiveness of cognitive

rationalizations that otherwise allow one to inﬂict harm on others (Aquino et al., 2007).

Similarly, a person with a strong moral identity tends to include more people within his

or her circle of moral regard, and is less likely to have a social dominance orientation

(Hardy, Bhattacharjee, Reed, & Aquino, 2010). Individuals with moral identity are more

empathic (Detert, Trevino, & Sweitzer, 2008), show greater moral attentiveness (Rey-

nolds, 2008), and are less aggressive (Barriga, Morrison, Liau, & Gibbs, 2001).

Moral Identity and Personality. There are now insistent calls to study moral ration-

ality within the broader context of personality (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004b; Walker &

Hennig, 1998). To this end Hill and Roberts (2010) argue that moral personality is a

plural construct, that is, there are many ways of being a moral person. In addition, they

argue that models of moral personality are not incompatible with models of moral rea-

soning or with identity theory, and are not limited to trait conceptions of personality.

Moreover, the formation and maintenance of moral personality is a lifespan develop-

mental concern, although much of the extant research has focused on adolescence and

emerging adulthood.

Walker and his colleagues have attempted to understand the personality of moral

exemplars in terms of the Big 5 taxonomy. One study showed, for example, that the

personality of moral exemplars was oriented towards conscientiousness and agreea-

bleness (Walker, 1999). Agreeableness also characterized young adult moral exemplars

(Matsuba & Walker, 2005). In a study of brave, caring, and just Canadians, Walker and

Pitts (1998) found that brave exemplars aligned with a complex of traits associated with

extraversion; caring exemplars aligned with agreeableness; and just exemplars with a

mixture of conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness to experience. This

pattern was largely replicated by Walker and Hennig (2004).

More recently, Frimer and Walker (2009) argued that moral centrality is “reﬂected

by narratives that are rich in themes of communion and have agentic and communal

themes interwoven into the same thought” (p. 1672). In this study life story narratives

were elicited from Canadian university students using an interview protocol. Transcripts

of the interviews were analyzed for the presence of 10 values derived from the Schwartz

Value Survey (1992) using a narrative coding paradigm called VEINs (Values Embedded

in Narratives). A moral centrality index was constructed to describe the extent to which

agentic and communal values were predominant in a single narrative unit. In their view,

moral centrality reﬂects strong communal themes that are interwoven with agency. The

results showed that moral centrality predicted a composite measure of morally relevant

behaviors. On this basis the authors suggest that what drives the behavior of moral exem-

plars is the recognition that moral concerns and self-interest can be reconciled, and that

the ﬂexible coordination of agency and communion is undoubtedly a developmental

achievement.

Whereas Frimer and Walker (2009) examine the centrality of values in life story nar-

ratives to describe moral functioning, Lapsley and Narvaez (2004b) appeal to social cog-

nitive theory in their account of the moral personality. Social cognitive theory draws

attention to cognitive-affective mechanisms that inﬂuence social perception, and serve

to create and sustain patterns of individual differences. If schemas are easily primed

and readily activated (“chronically accessible”), then they direct our attention selec-

tively to certain features of our experience. This selective framing disposes one to select

92 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

schema-compatible tasks, goals, and settings that canalize and maintain our disposi-

tional tendencies (Cantor, 1990). We choose environments, in other words, that support

or reinforce our schema-relevant interests, which illustrates the reciprocal nature of

person-context interactions. Moreover, we tend to develop highly practiced behavioral

routines in those areas of our experience that are regulated by chronically accessible

schemes. In these areas of our social experience we become “virtual experts,” and in

these life contexts social cognitive schemas function as “a ready, sometimes automati-

cally available plan of action” (Cantor, 1990, p. 738). In this way chronically accessible

schemas function as the cognitive carriers of dispositions.

Social cognitive theory asserts, then, that schema accessibility and conditions of

activation are critical for understanding how patterns of individual differences are

channeled and maintained. From this perspective Lapsley and Narvaez (2004b) claim

that a moral person, or a person who has a moral identity or character, is one for whom

moral categories are chronically accessible. If having a moral identity is just when

moral notions are central, important, and essential for one’s self-understanding, then

notions that are central, important, and essential are also those that are chronically

accessible for appraising the social landscape. Chronically accessible moral schemas

provide a dispositional readiness to discern the moral dimensions of experience, as

well as to underwrite the discriminative facility in selecting situationally appropriate

behavior.

Recent research has attempted to document the social cognitive dimensions of moral

cognition. For example, research shows that conceptions of good character (Lapsley &

Lasky, 2001) and of moral, spiritual, and religious persons (Walker & Pitts, 1998) are

organized as cognitive prototypes. Moreover, moral chronicity appears to be a dimen-

sion of individual differences that inﬂuences spontaneous trait inference and text com-

prehension (Narvaez, Lapsley, Hagele & Lasky, 2006). In two studies Narvaez et al. (2006)

showed that moral chronics and non-chronics respond differently to the dispositional

and moral implications of social cues.

Educational Implications

The recent enthusiasm for theoretical and empirical analysis of moral self-identity has

not yet produced well-articulated plans for making it the aim of education. One impedi-

ment is that moral self-identity is often conceptualized from the perspective of adult

functioning, and it has proven difﬁcult to work out possible developmental trajectories

with enough speciﬁcity to yield testable empirical outcomes. This is particularly true for

social cognitive accounts of moral self-identity. In the absence of strong developmental

models it is often difﬁcult to work out appropriate educational strategies. Without more

precise knowledge of developmental mechanisms it is difﬁcult to know just where, when,

and how to intervene.

Yet we are not completely helpless, either. Indeed, each of the perspectives on moral

self-identity reviewed here yield clues on how to educate the moral self. For example,

one implication of Blasi’s approach is that children should develop the proper moral

desires as second-order volitions; and to master the virtues of self-control and integrity.

But how do children develop wholehearted commitment to moral integrity? Blasi (2005)

helpfully describes some possible steps towards the development of the moral will. Yet

there are additional clues about possible pathways from research on the development of

“conscience” in early childhood.

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 93

Kochanska (2002) proposed a two-step model of emerging morality that begins with

the quality of parent–child attachment. A strong, mutually responsive relationship with

caregivers orients the child to be receptive to parental inﬂuence. Within the bonds of a

secure attachment the child is eager to comply with parental expectations and standards.

There is “committed compliance” on the part of the child to the norms and values of

caregivers which, in turn, motivates moral internalization and the work of “conscience.”

Kochanska’s model moves, then, from security of attachment to committed compliance

to moral internalization. This movement is also expected to inﬂuence the child’s emerg-

ing internal representation of the self. As Kochanska (2002) put it:

Children with a strong history of committed compliance with the parent are likely

gradually to come to view themselves as embracing the parent’s values and rules.

Such a moral self, in turn, comes to serve as the regulator of future moral conduct

and, more generally, of early morality.

(p. 340)

This model would suggest that the source of wholehearted commitment to morality

that is characteristic of Blasian moral personality might lie in the mutual, positive affec-

tive relationship with caregivers—assuming that Kochanska’s “committed compliance”

is a developmental precursor to Blasi’s “wholehearted commitment.”

A recent longitudinal study by Kochanska and colleagues (Kochanska, Koenig, Barry,

Kim, & Yoon, 2010) tracked the interplay of conscience development, moral self, and

psychosocial competence over the course of the toddler years to early school age. Two

dimensions of conscience were assessed at 25, 38, and 52 months of age. One dimen-

sion was “out-of-sight” compliance, that is, the extent to which toddlers internalized

their mother’s and father’s rules when the child was left alone. The second dimension

was empathic concern toward each parent, as assessed in a simulated distress paradigm.

At 67 months the moral self was assessed using a puppet interview; and at 80 months

parents and teachers rated the children on various assessments of psychosocial com-

petence that tapped, for example, peer relationships, school engagement, problem and

prosocial behavior, oppositional or deﬁant behavior, the absence of guilt or empathy, and

disregard for rules and standards.

Of particular interest was the puppet interview of the moral self. It works this way:

Two puppets are anchored on opposite ends of 31 items. The items pertained to dimen-

sions of early conscience (e.g., internalization of rules, empathy, apology). Each item is

presented with a brief scenario, with one puppet endorsing one option and the other

puppet endorsing a contrary option. For example, in one scenario Puppet 1 would say:

“When I break something, I try to hide it so no one ﬁnds out.” Puppet 2 would declare

“When I break something, I tell someone right away.” Then the child is asked “What about

you? Do you try to hide something that you broke or do you tell someone right away?”

The results showed that children who as toddlers and preschoolers had a strong

history of internalized out-of-sight compliance with parents’ rules were also competent,

engaged, and prosocial at early school age, with few antisocial behavioral problems. Sim-

ilarly, toddlers and preschoolers with a strong history of empathic responding showed a

robust proﬁle of psychosocial competence at early school age. Moreover, children’s moral

self was a strong predictor of future competent behavior as well. Children at 67 months

who were “highly moral” were rated at 80 months to be prosocial, highly competent, and

94 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

well-socialized. What’s more, the child’s moral self was shown to mediate the relation

between out-of-sight compliance with maternal rules and later psychological compet-

ence at 80 months.

Indeed, Kochanska et al. (2010) argued that the moral self is the mechanism that

at least partly accounts for the relation between early conscience and later evidence of

psychosocial competence. A number of possibilities are suggested: Perhaps the moral self

is motivated to avoid cognitive dissonance or is better able to anticipate guilty feelings;

or perhaps the moral self exercises automatic regulation due to the high accessibility

of moral schemas, an explanation that accords with social cognitive approaches to the

moral self (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004b).

Kochanska’s model would be scarce comfort to Blasi to the extent that it yields only

a morality of internalization or of compliance. Yet, if there is something to it in broad

stroke, that is, if the moral self is congealed within a context of positive, secure attach-

ment relations (Reimer, 2003)—and a relational context is unspeciﬁed in Blasi’s model

but could use one—then this underscores the importance of school bonding, caring

school communities, and attachment to teachers as a basis for prosocial and moral devel-

opment (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006).

For example, the Seattle Longitudinal Project shows that there is a press toward

behavior consistent with standards when standards are clear and when students have

feelings of commitment and attachment to school (Hawkins, Guo, Hill, Battin-Pearson,

& Abbott, 2001). The Child Development Project showed the elementary schoolchil-

dren’s sense of community leads them to adhere to the values that are most salient in the

classroom (Solomon, Watson, Battistich, Schaps, & Delucchi, 1996). These ﬁndings align

with Kochanska’s model of early conscience development: Secure attachment promotes

committed compliance which leads to internalization of norms, values, and standards,

suggesting some continuity in the mechanisms by which children appropriate the moral

values of their family or classroom community (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006).

Power’s (2004; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) model of the moral self also

underscores the importance of school community for inducing commitment to moral

ideals and norms. There are speciﬁc guidelines on how this should work: classrooms

and schools should be just communities that use participatory democratic practices

and frequent class meetings. It is attested by a signiﬁcant literature that documents the

efﬁcacy of moral atmosphere for promoting responsibility (Higgins-D’Alessandro &

Power, 2005) and for reducing transgressive behavior in schools (e.g., Brugman et al.,

2003).

The moral exemplar (e.g., Colby & Damon, 1992) and systems (Hart, 2005) approach

to moral self-identity lead to similar educational recommendations. For example, moral

exemplar research holds out as a goal the prosocial commitment exhibited by care exem-

plars. Colby and Damon (1992) nominate social inﬂuence as a decisive mechanism. For

example, that a friend’s prosocial behavior can inﬂuence one’s own pursuit of moral

goals (e.g., to be helpful or cooperative) when the affective relationship is strong and

interactions are frequent (Barry & Wentzel, 2006).

Similarly, Hart’s (2005) research illustrates the importance of cultivating attachment

to organizations that provide social opportunities for young people to engage their

communities in prosocial service. Indeed, we have seen how community involvement

predicts moral self-ideal in late adolescence (Pratt et al., 2003). There is a signiﬁcant

literature that documents that salutary effect of participation in voluntary organizations

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 95

and service learning opportunities more generally on prosocial behavior and moral civic

identity (C. Flanagan, 2004; Youniss & Yates, 1997, 1999).

One challenge for a social cognitive theory of moral self-identity is to specify the

developmental sources of moral chronicity. Lapsley & Narvaez (2004b) suggest that

moral chronicity is built on the foundation of generalized event representations that

characterize early socio-personality development (Thompson, 1998). These representa-

tions have been called the “basic building blocks of cognitive development” (Nelson &

Gruendel, 1981, p. 131). They are working models of how social routines unfold and of

what one can expect of social experience.

But the key characterological turn of signiﬁcance for moral psychology is how these

early social-cognitive units are transformed from episodic into autobiographical memory.

Autobiographical memory is also a social construction elaborated by means of dialogue

within a web of interlocution. Parental interrogatives help children organize events into

personally relevant autobiographical memories which provide, as part of the self-nar-

rative, action-guiding scripts that become frequently practiced, over-learned, routine,

habitual, and automatic. Hence parental interrogatives might also include reference to

norms, standards, and values so that the moral ideal-self becomes part of the child’s

autobiographical narrative. In this way parents help children identify morally relevant

features of their experience and encourage the formation of social cognitive schemas

that are chronically accessible (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004b). This suggests, though, that

the education of moral self-ideal is not always a matter of pedagogy or curriculum and

does not take place primarily in schools.

Doubts and Futures

As we have seen, moral self-identity is an attractive concept and a promising one. It

seems to capture something important about the link between personal agency and the

construction of moral ideals. It opens up possibilities for engaging other psychological

literatures, particularly those regarding personality and cognition, with the goal of deriv-

ing robust integrative models of moral functioning. Moreover, implications for educating

the moral self seem broadly compatible with developmental insights about qualities of

attachment and affective interpersonal experiences at home, school, and neighborhood;

and compatible, too, with instructional best practice with respect to the importance of

caring classrooms, just communities, service learning, and participation in voluntary

organizations at school and in the wider community.

Nucci (2004) raises several objections. First, he generally doubts that anyone would

deny the importance of morality for the self. Virtually everyone thinks that morality

is important. Although it is possible for people to disagree about how morality might

be displayed for given situations and contexts, he notes that “people generally attend

to moral social interactions and have common views of prima facie moral obligations”

(p. 119). Second, there is ambiguity about just when and where a moral self-identity is

evinced. Indeed, current theory on the moral self does not, in his view, come to grips

sufﬁciently with the heterogeneity of the self system. Our self-concepts are highly differ-

entiated and domain speciﬁc; and our self-evaluations are similarly speciﬁc, ﬂexible, and

subject to discounting. Mindful of such complexity, when are we conﬁdent in ascribing

moral self-identity to an agent?

Current research ascribes a moral self to individuals who volunteer in the community—

they are “care exemplars.” But what about the leaders of the Weathermen underground

96 s D. Lapsley and P.C. Stey

who took up action against an immoral war by engaging in violent protest? Was John

Brown exercising the prerogatives of moral self-identity at Harpers Ferry? What is the

true measure of a man’s moral character, when he leads the nation in a heroic struggle for

civil rights, or when he has serial extramarital affairs along the way? Most biographical

studies of individuals whose lives are marked by extraordinary moral accomplishment

also reveal instances of appalling moral failure. This observation is made banal by the

uneven manifestation of moral qualities in our own lives let alone the lives of heroic

exemplars. Yet the language of moral self-identity seems inadequate to capture this com-

plexity. The construct seems insensate to the demand of situations, underestimates con-

textual inﬂuence, and otherwise neglects the social contexts that interact dynamically

with dispositional tendencies (Doris, 2002). Nucci (2004) asks: “Does our moral identity

shift with each context? Is it the case that as the self-same person it is the salience of

morality that shifts with the context?” (p. 127). As a corrective Nucci (2004) calls for a

“contextualist structural theory” of moral cognition to account for when individuals

prioritize morality and when they do not.

Four additional problems are noted by Nucci (2004). First, it is reductionist to argue

that the motivation for moral action is the desire to maintain consistency between action

and moral identity. To do so reduces the contextual complexity of moral situations to

the simple judgment of whether to take a certain action is consistent with one’s sense of

self. Second, self-consistency is not only reductionism but a species of ethical egoism. It

reduces questions about fairness, justice, and human welfare to questions about whether

actions accord with desires or make one feel good about the self. Following Frankena

(1963), Nucci (2004) argues that self-consistency is not a motive for moral action, but

rather judgment that it was “the right thing to do.” Third, there is very little speciﬁcation

of the developmental features of moral self-identity. Fourth, in some instances, a moral

identity is utterly dysfunctional if our identiﬁcation with a moral framework is so total

that we are frozen into moral rigidity or else burn with the crazed indignation of the

moral zealot. Moral saints make life unbearable for the rest of us, and you couldn’t be

friends with one (Wolf, 1982; also, Sorensen, 2004).

There are also compelling criticisms of the orienting philosophical framework(s) that

stands behind current work on moral self-identity (e.g., Keba, 2004). For example, the

language of “centrality” is used to describe when moral traits are core to self-identity. Yet,

as Rorty and Wong (1990) point out, there are at least seven ways for a trait to be central

to identity, and there is no necessary connection among them. In addition O. Flanagan

(1990) believes it a mistake to align moral identity too closely with strong evaluation

and second-order desires because to do so overstates the degree to which effective iden-

tity requires reﬂectiveness, articulacy, and self-comprehension. One can recognize and

acknowledge standards and conform behavior to them, “without ever having linguisti-

cally formulated the standard and without even possessing the ability to do so when

pressed” (p. 53).

Flanagan’s (1990) critique does push extant psychological theory in interesting ways.

It holds open the possibility that self-comprehension of the second-order type might

proceed unreﬂectively, perhaps automatically and outside of consciousness. It holds out

the possibility that psychological theories that require conscious, intentional, and voli-

tional self-appropriation and self-mastery might overestimate the intellectual resources

necessary for the development of the moral will; and overestimate the need for articulate

reﬂective judgment of the sort that is envisioned for moral self-identity.

Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education s 97

Future research on moral self-identity could surely take up these and other matters

with proﬁt. It might ask, for example: What is the nature of second-order desires, and

how transparent must they be to articulate self-comprehension? How and where do

automaticity and “non-conscious” control intersect with the development of the moral

will? What does self-appropriation look like in early development? In addition, future

research must specify more precise developmental models. Although it is useful to

explore adult forms of the moral self, particularly as these are regarded as endpoints of

a developmental process, we must now work back to discern the proper trajectories that

yield these adult forms as outcomes.

By far the most glaring deﬁciency in moral self-identity research is the relative absence

of well-attested assessments of the construct. There is no consensus on how best to

measure moral self-identity in adulthood; and we are not aware of any systematic attempt

to measure it in children, a fact that explains the paucity of developmental research.

Nothing will stop the momentum of scholarly interest in moral self-identity more surely

than the failure to develop suitable assessments. Indeed, most of the advances in moral

psychology research over the last 50 years were made possible by the availability of well-

regarded (interview and questionnaire) assessments of moral development and prin-

cipled reasoning. Clearly the development of such assessments for moral self-identity

should be a high priority.

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101

TEACHING ETHICALLY AS A MORAL CONDITION OF

PROFESSIONALISM

Elizabeth Campbell

From Alan Tom’s initial identiﬁcation of teaching as a moral craft (1984) to David

Hansen’s exploration of the moral heart of teaching (2001); from Goodlad, Soder, and

Sirotnik’s recognition of the moral dimensions of teaching (1990) to empirical studies

that vividly reveal these dimensions (Jackson, Boostrom, & Hansen, 1993; Richard-

son & Fenstermacher, 2001), the academic and professional literature has increasingly

illustrated how the moral aspects and complexities of K-12 teaching can be neither

separated from the technical elements of instruction nor, worse, ignored as somehow

extraneous to the central mission of education. Some connect these moral nuances,

embedded in the daily life of classrooms and schools, to the professional role of the

teacher and the ethical implications for professionalism more generally in teaching

(Bergem, 1993; Campbell, 2003; Carr, 2000; Oser & Althof, 1993; Sockett, 1993; Strike

& Soltis, 1992; Strike & Ternasky, 1993). Within a context that integrates considera-

tion of the moral nature of teaching with applied professional ethics in teaching, this

chapter explores the concept of teacher professionalism as being inseparable from

what I deﬁne as the teacher’s ethical knowledge. This knowledge relates to both how

teachers conduct themselves in morally appropriate ways and how they engage in

moral education.

Speciﬁcally, the chapter addresses two interrelated areas, presented within discrete

sections. The ﬁrst argues that ethical knowledge can provide the basis of a renewed pro-

fessionalism in teaching. It deﬁnes ethical knowledge and discusses teaching as unique

among the professions, not least because of its moral and ethical layers. It further dis-

tinguishes ethical knowledge from formalized codes and standards. The second section,

which constitutes the dominant part of this chapter, explores ethical practice as a profes-

sional imperative. It offers examples of moral agency, which underlies ethical knowledge,

as illustrated by the teacher’s actions as both a moral practitioner and a moral educator.

Conversely, and contentiously, it further presents an argument against the co-opting of

moral agency as a kind of politicized and ideological activism.

102 s E. Campbell

The overall theoretical framework underpinning this chapter is informed by three

key assumptions or orientations to the concept of ethical knowledge that are woven

throughout the discussion. First, I use the adjectives “moral” and “ethical” as more or less

synonymous or interchangeable terms, a practice that seems to be increasingly defensible

in an applied philosophical sense (Beckner, 2004). In either case, the conceptual basis of

the terms is the same in that both relate to human virtues in an Aristotelian tradition,

grounded in a rejection of moral or ethical relativism. As I have written elsewhere:

Many philosophers and researchers interested in the moral dimensions of education

assume, as part of varying ideological and conceptual frameworks, that at least a

basic distinction between ethical right and wrong does not need a detailed defence.

In other words, in insisting that a good teacher is neither cruel nor unfair, we need not

haggle over why this is essentially a moral imperative, rather than merely a culturally

and socially constructed norm reﬂecting the interests of some over others.

(Campbell, 2003, p. 15)

This position echoes Clark’s argument that,

In the moral domain, however, one opinion is not [author’s emphasis] as good as

any other. . . . Overarching principles have been agreed on in our society and within

the teaching profession—principles dealing with honesty, fairness, protection of the

weak, and respect for all people.

(Clark, 1990, p. 252)

It further borrows Fenstermacher’s defense when he identiﬁes virtues such as fairness,

honesty, courage, and compassion as exemplary; he states,

I leave open here the very important issue of why these particular traits are to be

regarded as virtues, doing so with the philosophically lame but empirically compel-

ling claim that the literature, customs and norms of the vast majority of world cul-

tures hold these traits in high regard.

(Fenstermacher, 2001, pp. 640–641)

This non-relativist support for core virtues and the moral and ethical principles of

professional conduct that build on them conforms to others’ identiﬁcation of a range of

professional virtues such as fairness, justice, care, integrity, honesty, patience, constancy,

responsibility, and various interpretations of the ancient principles of non-maleﬁcence and

beneﬁcence (Haynes, 1998; Lovat, 1998; Osguthorpe, 2008; Reitz, 1998; Sockett, 2012;

Strike & Ternasky, 1993). It is further reinforced by Nucci’s (2001) clear distinction between

the moral domain, with its universal set of values and a “basic core of morality” (p. 19),

and the social domain that is more focused on conventions and variable preferences.

As a ﬁnal note in relation to this ﬁrst theoretical assumption, I acknowledge that I

use both the language of virtues, in the spirit of Carr (2000) and Fenstermacher (1990,

2001), and the language of moral and ethical principles, in the tradition of Strike (1995,

1999) and his work with Soltis (1992) and Ternasky (1993). This may seem philosophi-

cally confused. However, this chapter is concerned with the applied ethics embedded

in the real life practices of teachers, regardless of whether these are guided by virtuous

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 103

habituation or adherence to overarching principles, rather than with moral and ethical

theory. I also take comfort from Colnerud’s argument in relation to teacher ethics as

a research problem that, “a synthesis of ethics of virtue and ethics of principles might

in this case be seen as a way to create a dialogue between the two viewpoints as com-

plementary instead of conﬂicting positions” (Colnerud, 2006, p. 372).

The second key theoretical orientation informing this chapter concentrates on the

intentions and behaviors of teachers, as expressive of their ethical knowledge, rather than

on the impact their style and conduct have on students’ moral growth and development.

As an issue of teacher professionalism, the focus on ethical knowledge revolves around

what teachers do or fail to do and why rather than on what students learn from their

experience. Obviously, the latter is not inconsequential, and the separation between what

teachers do and say and what students take from their actions in terms of moral mes-

sages is not so neat. Nonetheless, for the purposes here, the gauge of one’s ethical know-

ledge as a professional imperative prioritizes transmitted virtue in action and intention,

not the received impact. This may be just as well given the ambiguity of any relational

connection between the teacher’s moral character and the student’s moral development

(Osguthorpe, 2008). As Hansen clariﬁed in his investigation of the moral impact on

students that teachers have, by virtue of their style and character, it is doubtful “whether

a teacher’s moral inﬂuence can ever be veriﬁed. Such inﬂuence may not be a matter of

cause and effect in any direct manner, and so may not be measurable in the familiar

meaning of that term” (Hansen, 1993a, p. 418). Ultimately, this chapter is considerably

less concerned with the philosophical question, “Can virtue be taught?” than with the

professional question, “How can teachers conduct their work in schools virtuously?”

One may note that this chapter’s title is “Teaching Ethically,” and not “Teaching Ethics.”

The third and last orientation is based on the premise that ethical knowledge is the

domain of responsible and professionally accountable individual teachers, working both

independently and collectively, rather than the expression of organizational structures,

institutional inﬂuences, systemic realities, and other forces beyond the control of the

individual practitioner. This is not to deny the obvious point that teachers work within

systems and administrative structures, and that contextual elements have an evident

inﬂuence on their daily working lives. Nonetheless, such realities should not obscure

the moral responsibility of individuals for their own professional conduct and replace it

with a kind of organizational culpability so sharply criticized by Sommers (1984) as the

ideology that shifted the traditional “seat of moral responsibility” (p. 387) from being a

matter of an individual’s personal virtue to society and its various institutions.

When people reminisce about their school days, in both positive and negative respects,

they invariably recall, in terms that say much about human character, individual teachers

who touched their lives, for better or worse, rather than referencing overall school pol-

icies, norms, and systemic forces. In one study, in which students were asked about the

strengths and weaknesses of their schools, they uniformly based their answers on their

teachers (Weissbourd, 2003). And, as Hansen (2001) reminds us, “Character has to do

with how the person [of the teacher] regards and treats others” (p. 29). Similarly, others

have concluded that the character of the individual teacher is central to the moral nature

of education (Carr, 2000; Higgins, 2011; Luckowski, 1997; Sockett, 2012; Wynne & Ryan,

1997). Ethical knowledge is rooted in the individual teacher’s moral sensibility and char-

acter, and augmented through experience by communities of professionals sharing and

reﬁning this virtue based knowledge as it is reﬂected daily in schools.

104 s E. Campbell

ETHICAL KNOWLEDGE AS THE FOUNDATION OF TEACHER

PROFESSIONALISM

The teacher’s moral agency is an inevitable state of being that is revealed whenever the

teacher, as a moral person, conducts him or herself in schools with honesty, a sense of

fairness, integrity, compassion, patience, respect, impartiality, care, dedication, and other

such core virtues. It is also demonstrated when the teacher, as a moral educator, encour-

ages students to appreciate such similar virtues and to conduct themselves in ways that

honor them. Teachers may reﬂect this dual concept of moral agency formally or inform-

ally, consciously and intentionally or not, and frequently or rarely.

By extension, ethical knowledge is quite simply the heightened awareness that teach-

ers—some more than others—have of their moral agent state of being. It is the focused

and self-conscious recognition of how moral agency inﬂuences their daily actions and

interactions, and it compels their deliberate attentiveness to ensure that these inﬂuences

are experienced positively in a moral and ethical sense. As Buzzelli and Johnston (2002)

explain in their description of the teacher as a moral agent,

In this view, teaching is an activity involving a deep awareness of the signiﬁcance

of one’s choices and how those choices inﬂuence the development and well-being

of others. An awareness of the moral signiﬁcance of one’s work enlarges the under-

standing of that work.

(p. 120)

This level of awareness is cultivated when teachers develop the capacity to identify how

moral and ethical values and principles are either exempliﬁed or undermined by their

own actions, words, choices, and intentions. Such connections are made intellectually,

emotionally, intuitively, philosophically, practically, and experientially as teachers

engage in individual reﬂection and collective discussion with peers about the work they

do daily. The concept of ethical knowledge assumes, as many sources from the scholarly

literature conﬁrm, that teaching is a moral profession with inherently ethical dimen-

sions embedded in its practice and intent (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002; Campbell, 2003;

Colnerud, 1997, 2006; Goodman & Lesnick, 2004; Haynes, 1998; Hostetler, 1997;

Huebner, 1996; Jackson et al., 1993; MacMillan, 1993; Richardson & Fenstermacher,

2001; Sanger, 2001; Simon, 2001; Sockett, 1993; Stengel & Tom, 1995; Strike, 1995; Tirri

& Husu, 2002).

Ethical knowledge, albeit incomplete and ever evolving, based on the dynamics of

new and unpredictable experiences, “illustrates teachers’ devotion to living through their

actions essential moral and ethical principles descriptive of a human legacy in all its

complexities and apparent contradictions” (Campbell, 2003, p. 138). Thus, on one hand,

ethical knowledge is honed within school climates rife with dilemmas and tensions as

teachers, like anyone else, interpret and prioritize core moral values and principles in

divergent ways. They make intuitive decisions based on what Strike (1999) would char-

acterize as “moral pluralism” in ways that are both conﬂicting and compatible along a

wide spectrum of moral goods. And, as Sirotnik (1990) reminds us, in his defense of

moral imperatives, “An anti-relativist position, however, does not automatically resolve

fundamental questions, dilemmas, and issues” (p. 320). On the other hand, ethical know-

ledge, while rooted in an individual’s sensibility and experience, is also, I would argue,

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 105

an expression of applied professional ethics in teaching (Carr, 2000; Lovat, 1998; Nash,

1996; Schwartz, 1998; Sockett & LePage, 2002; Strike & Ternasky, 1993), and should ulti-

mately embody a sense of collective professionalism, not individual subjectivity. And, as

I have stated before, the extensive knowledge of some teachers, who are quite aware of

and attentive to the moral and ethical elements of their practice, is “usable, sharable, and

learnable” (Campbell, 2003, p. 139) in ways that may enable more teachers, who may

be less aware, to develop it. As a body of knowledge, then, it can form the foundation

of renewed professionalism in teaching in a sense that is unique among the professions

(Campbell, 2004).

For those who study professional ethics in teaching as well as other disciplines, be it

from an applied philosophical perspective (Nash, 1996; Strike & Ternasky, 1993) or a

psychology based orientation (Rest & Narvaez, 1994), some level of agreement on rel-

evant ethical positions is a given, whether they are grounded in general core virtues or

on related principles associated with the speciﬁcs of the profession, or, most likely, on

both (MacMillan, 1993; Thompson, 1997). However, unlike in medicine or law, where

the ethical principles are applied to the practice of the dominant professional knowledge

base, in teaching the professional knowledge base is the ethical knowledge base. It is far

more challenging to disentangle the ethics of teaching from the very process, practice,

and intent of teaching as “the teacher’s conduct, at all times and in all ways, is a moral

matter” (Fenstermacher, 1990, p. 133). As Carr (1993) claims,

The knowledge and understanding which should properly inform the professional

consciousness of the competent teacher is . . . a kind of moral wisdom or judgement

which is rooted in rational reﬂection about educational policies and practices and

what is ethically [author’s emphasis], as well as instrumentally, appropriate to achieve

them.

(p. 265)

This ethical judgment is called on every time a teacher strives to balance the fair

treatment of an individual student with the fair treatment of the class group, or when

the teacher chooses curricular materials and pedagogical strategies with care and sensit-

ivity, or when evaluation is conducted with scrupulous honesty accompanied by a

concern for the emotional well being of students, or when kindness tempers discipline.

While mastery of subject matter, proﬁciency in classroom management techniques,

skilled understanding of pedagogy, and a comprehensive grasp of evaluation and assess-

ment strategies are integral elements of the competent teacher’s repertoire, it is the

practical moral wisdom—the ethical knowledge—that is infused into every aspect of

such technical abilities and the humanity teachers bring to their practice that distin-

guish them as professionals.

Furthermore, education as an ethical profession and a “thoroughly moral business”

(Sockett, 1996 p. 124), is unique by virtue of the exceptional vulnerability and dependence

of the primary “clients”—other people’s children—in addition to their non-voluntary

presence in schools (Bull, 1993; Colnerud, 2006; Goodlad et al., 1990). As well as having

a signiﬁcant ﬁduciary duty represented by the public trust in them, teachers are also

considered moral exemplars and educators, implicitly and explicitly, and therefore must

be concerned with the educative enrichment in ethical terms of their pupils in ways that

other professionals need not be.

106 s E. Campbell

Ironically, despite its distinctive moral nature as a profession, many have observed

that education lacks an “ethical language” (Strike, 1995, p. 33) or a “moral language” that

could help teachers recognize, articulate, and communicate with other teachers about

the moral and ethical complexities of their work (Colnerud, 2006; Sockett & LePage,

2002). Despite supporting the belief that most teachers generally try to be seriously com-

mitted to the well being of students and act with intuitively good judgment, Sockett and

LePage (2002) address the lamentable state in the profession due to this lack of a moral

vocabulary. They propose in its absence that teachers need a kind of “moral case law”

(p. 170) to provide a base for making conﬁdent ethical judgments that transcend mere

intuition.

Ethical knowledge has its origins in moral sensibility and intuitive perspectives on

right and wrong; however, as it intersects with a deliberative awareness of one’s own

practice, as well as that of others, it moves into the realm of practical moral wisdom

(Carr, 2000; Higgins, 2011; Sockett, 2012), a kind of professional virtue-in-action that

could resemble moral case law. To be clear, this is quite distinct from formalized ethical

codes and standards that idealize principles and virtues, rather than illuminate how they

pertain to daily professional life, or focus so narrowly on legal and contractual issues

that any moral emphasis is obscured. Traditionally, such adjectives as “platitudinous and

perfunctory” (Strike & Ternasky, 1993, p. 2) have been leveled at ethical codes. While they

may provide worthwhile inspiration to teachers by their very existence (Beckner, 2004;

Campbell, 2000; Freeman, 1998), codes have not been regarded as an effective vehicle to

enhance ethical practice or deepen the profession’s appreciation of the moral nuances of

the role (Campbell, 2000, 2001; Sergiovanni, 1992). Ethical knowledge, not ethical codes,

best captures the essence of professionalism in teaching as it enables teachers to appreci-

ate the complexities of their moral agency.

ETHICAL PRACTICE AS A PROFESSIONAL IMPERATIVE

The previous section introduced the notion of moral agency in teaching as the deﬁning

characteristic of the role of the teacher. It is the teacher’s astute awareness of the nuances

and moral complexities of this role and how they are embedded in practice that meas-

ures his or her ethical knowledge. It further proposed that this ethical knowledge, as a

kind of applied professional ethics, has the potential to provide the knowledge base in

teaching to deﬁne its professionalism. This section focuses on practices in teaching that

exemplify moral agency, ﬁrst, by depicting them as being rooted in virtues and prin-

ciples and, second, by presenting an argument against what I judge to be the co-opting

of moral agency on the basis of politics, not principles.

Reﬂecting Moral Agency as Daily Action

Integral to the moral and ethical nature of teaching and schooling is the role of the teacher

as a moral agent and moral exemplar (Fenstermacher, 2001; Hansen, 1993b, 2001; Katz,

Noddings, & Strike, 1999; Sizer & Sizer, 1999). Closely associated with this role is the

teacher’s inevitable capacity to be a moral educator (Berkowitz, 2000; Campbell, 1997;

Goodman & Lesnick, 2004; Lickona, 1991, 2004; McCadden, 1998; Nash, 1997; Nod-

dings, 2002; Nucci, 2001; Ryan & Bohlin, 1999; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2005; Wynne &

Ryan, 1997). Moral agency is a dual state that encompasses the teacher as a moral person

engaged in ethical professional conduct and as a moral educator who teaches to students

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 107

the same core virtues and principles that he or she strives to uphold in practice. The con-

nection between these two aspects of moral agency is evident as teachers live out through

their actions, attitudes, and words the same virtues they hope to instill in their students.

As one secondary school teacher explained,

If I don’t want kids to yell at me, then I have to make sure I don’t yell at them. It’s

as simple as that. If I want them to care about each other, then I have to show care

towards them; so, sometimes I do things for them. As a simple example, if a kid drops

her pen, I’ll get it for her. I don’t say, ‘Well, you dropped your pen, get it yourself.’

(Campbell, 2003, p. 37)

It is the ﬁrst characteristic of moral agency that enables the teacher to establish an

ethical tone in the classroom that, by extension, models virtuous conduct and cultivates

educative environments conducive to the purposes of the second characteristic, moral

education (Goodman & Lesnick, 2004; Simon, 2001; Watson, 2003).

Hansen (1993b) wisely noted, “not everything that teachers do necessarily [author’s

emphasis] has moral signiﬁcance, but any action a teacher takes can [author’s emphasis]

have moral import” (p. 669). In the terms of moral agency and ethical knowledge, what

makes teachers’ practices morally and ethically meaningful rests on whether core virtues

and principles are evidently bound up in their intentions and actions. The ways in which

these may be illustrated are as numerous as the teachers, students, and daily interac-

tions in schools themselves. Perhaps they are reﬂected when a teacher exercises care in

selecting and displaying student work, equitably allocating time, attention, privileges,

and duties to students, organizing small work groups to ensure fairness to all, enforc-

ing school and classroom rules with consistency, or when the teacher uses caution and

wisdom in the choice of sensitive curricular resources or assesses student performance

with honesty, fairness, and kindness. One can also hear ethical knowledge in the tone of a

teacher’s voice, the terms of politeness, respect, and warmth that are used, the distinction

between sarcasm and humor, the refusal to embarrass or humiliate individual students

in front of others, and the recognition that negative staffroom gossip about students and

their families is not professional conduct. Ethical knowledge is also reﬂected each time a

teacher consciously reminds, admonishes, corrects, and instructs students on how their

behavior affects others. The teacher’s effort to cultivate a civil and caring climate in the

classroom represents more than an organizing strategy for an efﬁcient community of

learners—it represents a sense of moral agency and moral purpose.

Since the early 1990s, we have been introduced to a variety of teachers through signi-

ﬁcant classroom based empirical studies whose daily practices, conscious or not, reﬂect

the moral dimensions of teaching (Campbell, 2003; Hansen, 1993a; Jackson et al., 1993;

McCadden, 1998; Richardson & Fallona, 2001; Richardson & Fenstermacher, 2001;

Sanger, 2001; Simon, 2001; Sockett, 1993). Invariably, these teachers are shown to be fair,

caring, honest, respectful, and empathetic, among other virtues. Their actions support

a well-reasoned argument that the two ethics of justice and care should temper each

other and not act as opposite extremes (Colnerud, 2006; Katz et al., 1999). Fairness or

justice, as “the ﬁrst professional principle” (Bricker, 1989, p. 28) is revealed to be far

more complex than one might imagine, as interpretations of what is just and fair differ

in varying contexts between equal or differential treatment of students (Colnerud, 1997;

Fallona, 2000; Nucci, 2001). These and other virtues are both exempliﬁed and challenged

108 s E. Campbell

in seemingly mundane decisions the teacher makes from calling on students to take turns

answering questions during class and when to allow extensions on assignments to more

serious dilemmas involving students who cheat, colleagues whose conduct is potentially

harmful to students (Campbell, 1996; Colnerud, 1997; Tirri & Husu, 2002), or involving

suspicions of child abuse.

Not surprisingly, teachers cannot be ever cognizant of the moral and ethical implica-

tions of everything they do in the course of a day. Teaching is enormously demand-

ing, frequently frustrating, occasionally overwhelming, and always an eclectic mix of

planned formality and spontaneous serendipity. And, as Buzzelli and Johnston (2002)

point out, teachers do have “blind spots in [their] ability to perceive the moral in situ-

ations” (p. 125). Nevertheless, their actions transmit moral messages, and the students

are watching, to borrow a phrase from Sizer and Sizer (1999). Consequently, the teacher’s

role as a moral exemplar and educator extends from this.

As stated at the beginning of the chapter, this discussion of moral agency and ethical

knowledge centers on the conduct of the professional teacher rather than on assessing

the moral growth of students. So, as moral exemplars and educators, what are teachers’

intentions, aspirations, and actions? For one elementary teacher, her responsibilities as

a moral educator were deﬁned not only by the immediate need to foster a positive rela-

tional climate in her classroom, but also by a larger societal expectation. She explained:

I see quite a bit of meanness among students, and I’m not going to tolerate it because

we’re two months into the school year now, and I think they should know right from

wrong in a basic sense. Of course, you’re going to get more complicated issues where

naturally I’ll help them through it, but they should know by now that if somebody

drops something, you don’t kick it. Also, when you keep disrupting you are disre-

specting. You are telling the children around you that it doesn’t matter to me that

I’m stopping the whole class for attention or I’m stopping the whole class from their

learning. What matters is that I want attention and I want it now. And, that’s an

ethical issue because students have to come to some understanding, maybe not at

the moment, but eventually, that you can’t function in a society like ours if you’re

constantly speaking out and you’re not listening to others.

(elementary school teacher in Campbell, 2003, p. 48)

This is reminiscent of Grant’s (1996) claim, in her discussion of hand-raising and

taking turns in class conversations, that “teachers are quite self-consciously teaching

both verbal skills and social skills during this time. But these social skills require certain

moral capacities and qualities of character” (p. 471). In the language of this chapter,

teachers’ “self-consciousness” of their moral instruction is indicative of their ethical

knowledge. Similarly, one secondary school teacher explained her continuous efforts in

the classroom to cultivate a sense of empathy for others, patience, tolerance,

self-discipline, courage, personal responsibility, mutual respect, and honesty this way:

I’m planting the seeds, and the seeds will at some point in time in their lives, they’ll

blossom. Maybe not right now; maybe one student out of the 28 may get it now.

Who knows, but I’m optimistic, and if I can reinforce in them the right behaviour, at

some point in their lives, they’ll get it. They’ll understand.

(Campbell, 2003, p. 56)

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 109

Like many other teachers, these two were observed reinforcing good behavior by

using combinations of the methods to foster moral conduct identiﬁed in Richardson

and Fenstermacher’s “Manner in Teaching Project”: constructing classroom com-

munities, didactic instruction, design and execution of academic tasks, calling out for

particular conduct, private conversations, and showcasing speciﬁc students (Fenster-

macher, 2001). Similarly, Jackson et al. (1993) empirically identiﬁed several categories of

instruction in which moral education occurs both formally and informally, including

ofﬁcial curricula, rituals and ceremonies, visual displays of moral content, spontaneous

interjections or moral commentary, and rules and regulations. In a similar vein,

Berkowitz (2000) includes in his list of “generic moral education” initiatives the promo-

tion of a moral atmosphere, role modeling of good character, discussions of moral

issues in class, and curriculum lessons in character. One of the most currently popular

and referenced variants of moral education, which will be addressed further in the sub-

sequent section, is “character education” (Lickona, 1991, 2004; Ryan, 1993; Ryan &

Bohlin, 1999). Described as “the methodical and deliberate inculcation of moral virtues

through a variety of planned lessons and exercises that usually involve a school-wide

initiative” (Campbell, 2004, p. 35), character education is dependent entirely on the role

of the teacher as a moral agent and exemplar.

The centrality of the teacher as a moral model and a moral educator is further high-

lighted by Narvaez and Lapsley (2008) in their account of two approaches for preparing

pre-service teachers to be “morally adept” (p. 162) as character educators. Similar to

Grant’s (1996) acknowledgment of self-consciousness and the deﬁnition of “ethical

knowledge” (Campbell, 2003) as the intentional awareness and conceptualization of

ethical values as they permeate professional practice, Narvaez and Lapsley argue that

effective moral education requires the conscious and deliberate cultivation of student

character that transcends the mere reﬂection of best practice instruction. In their

support of a “maximalist strategy” (p. 156), which advances a ﬁve-step framework for

developing a “novice-to-expert approach” to skills acquisition, they remind us that, “as

in any domain, moral character skills must be practiced in order to be developed. Teach-

ers must be oriented to providing good practice opportunities for students” (Narvaez &

Lapsley, 2008, p. 167). They further conclude, “when teachers are intentional and wise in

praxis, they provide students with a deliberative, positive inﬂuence on their individual

and group characters” (p. 169). Qualities of ethical intentionality and, in Aristotelian

terms, practical wisdom are at the core of professional teachers’ ethical knowledge—

their responsible appreciation of the potency of their own moral agency.

Moral agency, as it is discussed in this chapter, is an inevitable result of the teacher’s

role and professional responsibilities. It is expressed and revealed in the daily practice

of teachers who model, self-regulate, instruct, relate, admonish, and engage. It is the

illumination of virtues and moral and ethical principles as they are woven through the

intricacies of school and classroom life.

Politicizing Moral Agency as Ideological Activism

This chapter frames the discussion of moral agency in terms of the core virtues and

ethical principles teachers personally exude or apply to their practice and, similarly, those

they teach to students. It is reﬂective of a legacy of moral education that is historically,

philosophically, and professionally defensible. By contrast, there is a signiﬁcant concep-

tual distinction between this interpretation of moral agency as a natural extension of

110 s E. Campbell

what ethical teachers do on a daily basis and some more contemporary trends towards

the promotion of political and ideological agenda disguised as moral education and jus-

tiﬁed by teachers who corrupt their professional role as moral agents to inculcate such

agenda in the classroom. Admittedly, this part of the chapter will be the most argumen-

tative and, to some, contentious. However, it is also central to its conceptual foundation

of which an underlying assumption is that moral agency, as well as the ethical know-

ledge teachers cultivate as a result of their awareness of their agency, is about generalized

moral and ethical values relating to how human beings should treat one another (e.g.,

kindly, fairly, truthfully). This is quite distinct from partisan causes deemed to be moral

by some because of a political based, rather than a virtue based, conviction or afﬁli-

ation. By extension, the purpose of moral education is to develop ethical individuals who

appreciate the demands of living in a free civil society, who develop empathy for others

and a commitment to personal responsibility for one’s individual actions. This is in stark

contrast to the cultivation of students as moralistic social activists bent on enforcing

their political will on others regarding controversial social issues that have not been fully

debated, decided, or ultimately accepted within society.

There are many different approaches to teaching that satisfy the mandates of profes-

sionalism by honoring the moral agency role of teachers. There are others that, according

to the argument explored here, have the potential to “cross the line” beyond profes-

sional virtue into the murky domain of indoctrination. This discussion addresses three

broad conceptualizations of moral education: character education (Lickona, 1991, 2004;

Murphy, 1998; Ryan & Bohlin, 1999; Wynne & Ryan, 1997) and its critics (Kohn, 1997;

Nash, 1997), caring as moral education (Noddings, 2002), and social justice/critical

democratic orientations (Beyer, 1997). The comparison will not be exhaustive; however,

it will focus on the teacher as a moral agent and exemplar. It concludes that while the

ﬁrst two approaches have the potential to lead to the politicization of the classroom, they

need not necessarily do so. On the other hand, the third approach, by its own deﬁnition

and intention most deliberatively politicizes moral agency.

Character education, as the formalized and direct method of instruction in virtues

and principles of moral conduct (Lickona, 2004; Wiley, 1998), has been both cham-

pioned and criticized more than any other approach to moral education in recent years.

Grounded in a repudiation of moral relativism and in a philosophical and historical

legacy of support for core virtues and universal moral values, its conceptual basis shares

much with this chapter’s orientation to ethical knowledge. For many, character educa-

tion is a natural extension of what teachers, as moral agents, do as part of the inevit-

able function of their role—helping to socialize children to become virtuous individuals

capable of living in a society where principles such as honesty, fairness, kindness, respect,

tolerance, integrity, and responsibility are widely valued and reﬂected in the social norms

and legal foundations of the society. Studies have concluded that, in this respect, teach-

ers do not necessarily see character education as controversial or politically motivated,

but rather view it as a very signiﬁcant aspect of their professional responsibilities (Jones,

Ryan, & Bohlin, 1998; Leming & Yendol-Hoppey, 2004; Mathison, 1998). As these studies

note, teachers may differ on their interpretation of what character education means as

a pedagogical approach, but they generally do not question the underlying importance

of reinforcing good moral values that transcend normative social or cultural differences

among us and instead nurture a positive sense of our collective humanity. As one study

noted, the “days of value neutrality are over” (Jones et al., 1998, p. 14).

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 111

While generally supportive of the theoretical essence of character education, some

critics thoughtfully question its methods as a formal program. They focus on aspects of

those programs that emphasize extrinsic rewards for good behavior, drill, and unreﬂec-

tive or simplistic acceptance of moral precepts, or use what are seen to be gimmicky and

contrived strategies to inculcate virtues, and they regard such elements as indefensible

not only in a moral sense but also in a pedagogical one. However, even among such critics,

there are those who would not dispute the importance of good moral values (Berkowitz,

1998; Nash, 1997; Noddings, 2002). In this respect, Sockett (1996) has referred to himself

as a “sympathetic critic” (p. 124), as has Noddings (2002). Similarly, even in their pointed

criticism of character education, Joseph and Efron (2005) refer to its advocates’ “good

intentions” (p. 532).

Other critics are not at all sympathetic and vilify character education in political terms

as a “right wing” attempt to indoctrinate children (Beyer, 1991, 1997; Kohn, 1997). Such

critics, often but not exclusively writing from more radical perspectives of the ideological

“left,” question not simply the methods of character education but mostly the concep-

tual justiﬁcation for the support of core virtues as well as the inherent implication that

moral responsibility as well as negligence rest largely within the domain of individuals’

actions and attitudes rather than in societal structures, systems, and economies. Funda-

mental differences in perspectives along broad political and ideological lines between

these critics and those who support various philosophies of character education have

been well documented by, among others, McClellan (1999), Nash (1997), and Smagorin-

sky and Taxel (2005).

In contrast to such critics, the conceptual basis of this chapter’s discussion of moral

agency and ethical knowledge in teaching is consistent with the virtues and principles

advanced by the character educators, even though it agrees with previously mentioned

criticism of some of their instructional methods. Not surprisingly, this line of argument

views accusations against character education as a form of political indoctrination to be

overstated and arguable. Of course, character educators can politicize the public school

classroom just as any other teacher can; and, if modeling and instruction in the virtues

lapse instead into one-sided polemics about speciﬁc political, cultural, or religious beliefs

and causes—for example, pro-life stances and creationism—then the line separating

moral agency and ideological activism has been crossed. However, such political motiva-

tions do not deﬁne character education. A respect for good moral values that have wide

support in the mainstream population and are the bedrock of the norms and laws of civil

society is what deﬁnes it as a kind of moral education inseparable from the teacher’s role

as moral agent, model, exemplar, and educator.

As mentioned, there are those who share the character educators’ non-relativist support

for moral values, such as honesty and care, yet believe that they should be explored in

a more nuanced sense and “problematized” in the classroom in ways that acknowledge

differing and often conﬂicting contexts and controversies (Noddings, 2002; Simon, 2001;

Sockett, 1996). They refer to the cultivation of “caring communities” (Joseph & Efron,

2005) as an alternative approach to moral education that, while contextualizing moral

values more than character education does, still similarly emphasizes mutually supportive

relationships, respectful and safe discourse, and fair and inclusive interactions. However,

as with character education, the priority is on reinforcing morally positive values that

enable empathy and responsibility to ﬂourish within school and classroom based com-

munities, and the role of the teacher as a moral agent is central. While politicization of

112 s E. Campbell

this approach by means of “sermonizing” (Simon, 2001, p. 206) is certainly possible, as it

is in character education, it is not its primary intention.

In contrast, the third broad approach to a more obviously politicized version of moral

education changes the teacher’s professional role from moral agent to social activist.

Advocates of this approach are among the harshest critics of character education, and

their orientation to moral education is not that its purpose is to cultivate among indi-

viduals a dedication to core virtues and moral principles, but rather to engage students

in the critical examination of such principles and more importantly of society’s author-

ity structures, systems, norms, and practices. Critics of this approach assert that it “fails

as an ethical enterprise” (Grant, 1996, p. 472) for its potential to foster moral relativism,

dogmatism, and partisanship in the classroom. Its focus is on “ideology and doctrine

rather than on personal responsibility and practical decency” (Sommers, 1984, p. 388).

Ideologically reﬂective of the political left, this broad approach encompasses a range

of curricular orientations such as those frequently aligned with issues of equity and social

justice (not to be confused with neo-classical virtue theory based equality and justice),

critical theory, anti-discriminatory pedagogy, liberationist perspectives, anti-racist and

multicultural education, and critical democratic education (Adams, Bell, & Grifﬁn, 2006;

Ayers, 2004; Ayers, Quinn, & Stovall, 2009; Chapman & Hobbel, 2010; Slattery & Rapp,

2003). As a term used by many in education, “social justice” has worked its way into the

mainstream discourse and is often indistinguishable as a political concept from character

educators’ and others’ virtue based discussions about the need for all students, regardless

of differences, to be treated fairly, kindly, with respect and dignity, and so on. None-

theless, its modern roots lie, at least dominantly, within the political realm of Marxist

as well as more general socialist theory and reﬂect a central emphasis on societal and

material inequities (Koschoreck, 2006). In their defense of the ethic of critique (Starratt,

1994), based on critical theory and social justice, Shapiro and Stefkovich (2005) deﬁne its

origins in “modiﬁed Marxian analysis,” “Freirian critical pedagogy that views classrooms

as political and not only educational locations,” (pp. 14–15), and they connect it closely

to the call for political activism on the part of educators.

While advocates of this conceptualization tend not to use the language of virtue or

moral and civic dispositions (Nash, 1997), they often represent their critique as a moral

or ethical stance, and such critique can take many forms in the classroom. For example,

in their comprehensive presentation of “seven worlds of moral education,” Joseph and

Efron (2005) identify three alternatives to character education that clearly emanate from

this perspective. First, they describe the “cultural heritage” world that promotes the

teaching of “non-mainstream” values from “non-dominant cultures”; ironically, some

of the moral values referenced such as “respect for one another,” and “empathy” are not

unlike the virtues hailed by the character educators.

Second, the article introduces “peace education” that extends the idea of a caring com-

munity beyond the classroom, politicizes it along the lines of partisan causes represent-

ing varying interests from environmental education, global education, human rights and

animal rights activism to peace studies and conﬂict resolution. Even the authors, who are

not opposed to this alternative, note that it is difﬁcult to implement in public schools

because of its “potential for conﬂict with community values” prevalent in mainstream

society (Joseph & Efron, 2005, p. 529).

Third, the article identiﬁes “social action” as a desirable form of moral education that

focuses on the political nature of society as a whole, challenges examples of perceived

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 113

privilege and oppression, and works towards the goal of effecting critical social change.

By way of example, we are told of a grade 5 History class in Colorado studying the US

Civil War and slavery. In order to make “students learn to view themselves as social and

political beings” (p. 530), the teachers engaged them in an activity to raise awareness

of slavery in the Sudan. “The children raised money to buy freedom for a few slaves

. . . donations came in from around the world, and the class eventually purchased the

freedom of more than 1,000 people” (Joseph & Efron, 2005, p. 530). For those of us who

view the teacher’s moral agency as rooted in the exercising and exemplifying of virtue

and ethical principles rather than the crusading for political causes, such an example of

“moral education” seems quite appalling. By tugging on the heartstrings of young chil-

dren, this initiative essentially helps to sustain rather than disrupt the virulent slave trade

by playing by its own terms (purchasing freedom) as if they are somehow morally justi-

ﬁable or expedient rather than abhorrent, and probably did little more for the students

than give them a self-satisﬁed sense of moral righteousness.

Others have addressed ideologically similar social action initiatives that reﬂect what

Berkowitz (1998) has identiﬁed approvingly as a “much more expanded interpretation

of character education than once conceptualized” (p. 2). Indeed, one may argue that such

a redeﬁnition of the term, “character education,” not simply expands its scope to include

a highly diffuse range of activities, but also, more signiﬁcantly, redirects its conceptual

orientation into a different ideological arena. For example, Donahue (1999) advoc-

ates the use of “change-oriented service-learning” in schools as a way for teachers to

“challenge social, political, economic structures that allow injustice” (p. 687). Politically

motivated and activist in intention, this orientation to service learning is quite distinct

from other forms that some character educators support that tend instead to emphasize

philanthropy, caring, the cultivation of empathy and other virtues in students, and social

responsibility as opposed to social transformation. As Donahue notes, “a teacher’s inten-

tion behind assigning such a task shapes the way students reﬂect on the service, directing

their learning toward one orientation or the other” (p. 688). He acknowledges the ethical

dilemmas confronting teachers who differ over these two quite different orientations to

a form of moral education. He favors the social transformation approach and recom-

mends its introduction in pre-service teacher education as a way to prepare future teach-

ers to understand the moral imperatives of their profession (p. 685).

Such a perspective resonates with the work of Beyer (1997) that, like Donahue, pro-

motes the political, cultural, and social contextualization of moral issues within teacher

education programs as a way to enable teachers to raise critical questions about schooling

and current teaching practices. Beyer applauds the student teacher who has her pupils

“critique their own texts” (p. 249) in the search for historical prejudices, and another

teacher who represented to her grade 4 students a school rule about silence in the hall-

ways as a political power struggle with an authoritarian school administration rather

than a policy designed to respect other classrooms and guard against their disruption.

To the teacher, and to Beyer, the rule is seen as politically based, not virtue based, and

the moral lesson is to question authority, not to learn about the virtues of respect and

consideration for others.

Such examples of “teaching against the grain” (Joseph, 2003, p. 12) represent the

moral agency of teachers as deeply connected to wider social and political causes that are

invariably controversial in the public sphere (Nord, 2001) and rarely evoke the language

of professional virtue that is representative of moral agency and ethical knowledge as

114 s E. Campbell

discussed in this chapter. Hansen (2001) notes that the “big ideals” about social better-

ment may motivate teachers in ways that are not necessarily bad. However, he also cau-

tions that, “Ideals can become ideological or doctrinaire and can lead teachers away from

their educational obligations and cause them to treat their students as a means to an

end, whether the latter be political, social, or whatever” (p. 188). In my own critique

of social justice education as a potential vehicle of indoctrination (Campbell, 2013), I

argue that an emphasis on social justice, so ubiquitous as a curricular priority of con-

temporary teacher education, distracts teachers from appreciating their moral agency; it

redirects their attention away from the conceptualization of practice in clear moral and

ethical ways, more representative of the research literature that has documented what

Osguthorpe (2008) refers to as “teaching morally” and “teaching morality.”

Ethical teachers should be moral agents and moral models, not moralistic activists.

Their professional responsibility in this moral sense is an immediate and direct one that

honors the public’s trust in them and does not stray beyond the boundaries of their

mandate. It is simply to hold themselves accountable for how they treat the students

in their care and how they cultivate for them schooling experiences and relationships

based on time-honored virtues such as fairness, honesty, integrity, civility, compassion,

constancy, and responsibility, that are reﬂected in the best of societal values, norms, and

laws and that parallel most parents’ reasonable expectations of public schooling. When

teachers come to believe that the ethics of their profession relate more to how they can

serve wider political agenda as social reconstructionists than to how they should monitor

their daily practice and duties to their own students, their moral agency is compromised,

and the prospect for the development of a virtue based professional ethics expressive of

ethical knowledge in teaching is threatened.

In conclusion, moral agency may be broadly conceived in terms of not only what

teachers teach students by direct curricular means, but also more signiﬁcantly what

teachers do themselves as ethical professionals in classrooms and the virtues and moral

principles they reﬂect and, hence, model to students on a daily basis. As Nash (2005)

claims:

The place we call school is an environment of moral interaction and sometimes

moral struggle. Children’s ability to expand moral sensitivity and ethical reasoning

skills will very much depend upon how adults around them model ethical behavior

and ethical reasoning. Essentially, a teacher’s conduct, at all times and in all ways, is

a moral matter.

(p. 4)

While the emphasis of this chapter has been on the teacher’s conduct rather than the

students’ moral growth, the point to be stressed is that teachers are answerable, individ-

ually and collectively, for the choices they make in the classroom, the motivations that

drive them, the actions they take, and the words they use, regardless of whether the

direct effect they may or may not have on students can be empirically proven. As a

matter of professionalism, the measure of ethical teaching relies on the intentions of

teachers, as much as on their inﬂuence. Their awareness of such intentions and their

deliberative attention to the speciﬁcities of their daily practice, as ﬁltered through the

lens of virtues and moral principles, attest to their ethical knowledge. And, ultimately, it

is this ethical knowledge that is a deﬁning characteristic of professionalism in teaching.

Teaching Ethically as Professionalism s 115

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Part II

Theory-Based Approaches to Moral and

Character Education

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121

SOCIAL COGNITIVE DOMAIN THEORY AND MORAL

EDUCATION

Larry Nucci and Deborah W. Powers

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen

to like and immorality is what they dislike.

Alfred North Whitehead

The above quotation by Alfred North Whitehead sardonically expresses the conven-

tional view of morality that has tacitly guided traditional approaches to character

education dating back to the seminal work of Emil Durkheim (1925/1961). This con-

ception of morality carries with it an implicit theory of socialization that places

morality outside of the child and calls upon agents of socialization such as parents

and teachers to imbue the child with “moral values” through role modeling, emo-

tional attachment to groups, and appropriate uses of rewards and consequences.

While this inculcation perspective has a long history and continues to have advocates

(see Arthur, this volume), it sits in direct contrast with current understandings of

educational processes in virtually every academic subject area from reading (Shana-

han, 2000) to mathematics (Saxe et al., 2010; Schoenfeld, 1994). Contemporary

research-based accounts of learning view the child as an active interpreter of

information and general experience, and researchers and many educational practi-

tioners advocate constructivist approaches to teaching. Ironically then, proponents

of traditional character education are advising teachers to ignore educational

research and engage in practices that contradict methods of teaching that they

employ with every other aspect of instruction.

In addition to being at odds with contemporary educational practices, the tradition-

alist reduction of morality to the acquisition of the norms and conventions of society

mischaracterizes morality and the process of moral development. In this chapter, we will

present an alternative account of moral development and moral education, referred to

as social cognitive domain theory (Smetana, in press) that draws a distinction between

122 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

morality and matters of societal convention and personal choice. Following an overview

of basic theory and research, we will describe how domain theory can be applied to

educational practice.

DOMAIN THEORY

Morality and Social Convention

Domain theory maintains that social knowledge is constructed within basic conceptual

frameworks to account for qualitatively differing aspects of social and psychological

experience (Turiel, 1983). Individuals’ concepts and judgments about morality center

on actions that have an impact upon the welfare of others. Morality is structured by

underlying conceptualizations of justice, welfare, and rights (Turiel, 1983, 2002). Moral-

ity is distinguished from societal conventions, which are the consensually deﬁned norms

of conduct that regulate the social interactions of members within a particular social

group. Concepts and judgments about social conventions (e.g., addressing teachers by

titles such as Mr. or Mrs.) are structured by underlying understandings of the role of

social norms in lending predictability and coordination to social interaction and the

structuring social organization (Turiel, 1983, 2002). A basic premise of domain theory

is that our understandings of morality and convention form distinct conceptual systems

throughout development (Smetana, in press).

The positions taken by domain theory contradict the assumptions of moral devel-

opment maintained by Piaget (1932) and Kohlberg (1984), for whom moral develop-

ment entails a progressive differentiation of morality (fairness) out of earlier stages in

which morality is deﬁned by social norms and authority. According to these earlier the-

ories, morality supersedes and operates independently of convention only at the more

advanced stages of moral autonomy (Piaget, 1932) or post-conventional thinking (Kohl-

berg, 1984). Numerous studies, however, conducted in a wide range of cultural contexts

over the past 35 years have provided evidence that children as young as two-and-a-

half years old (Smetana & Braeges, 1990) and adults maintain conceptual distinctions

between issues of morality and societal convention (Smetana, in press; Turiel, 2002).

Studies have also examined whether the distinction between morality and conven-

tion extends to reasoning about religious norms (Nucci, 1985; Nucci & Turiel, 1993).

In those studies, Christian and Jewish children were asked whether actions considered

wrong within their religious traditions would be all right if scripture had not included

information that God had an objection to the act. Findings from this research revealed

that nearly all of the children and adolescents interviewed felt religious restrictions that

are similar to secular conventions would be all right if there were no religious rules or

biblical injunctions regulating the acts. These actions included such things as working

on the Sabbath, a woman leading worship services, Catholic priests marrying, or not

wearing head coverings during worship. On the other hand, at least 80% of participants

maintained that moral acts such as stealing from another person, unprovoked hitting,

slander, or damaging another’s property would continue to be wrong even if God or

scripture had been silent about the act. The ﬁndings of these studies with Catholics,

Amish, Dutch Reform Calvinists, and Conservative and Orthodox Jews indicate that

concepts of morality do not depend on adherence to a religious faith. They also are

important for moral education in liberal democracies because they demonstrate that

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 123

an educational focus on morality can be achieved in public schools independent of stu-

dents’ religious afﬁliations.

A basic assumption underlying the proposal that morality and convention emerge

as distinct conceptual frameworks is that they account for qualitatively differing and

fundamental aspects of social experience (Turiel, 1983). Evidence in support of this pro-

position has been obtained in observational studies of children’s interactions with one

another and with adults in preschool (Killen & Smetana, 1999; Much & Shweder, 1978;

Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Nucci, Turiel, & Encarnacion-Gawrych, 1983), elementary school

(Nucci & Nucci, 1982a), playground activities (Nucci & Nucci, 1982b), and in home

settings (Nucci & Weber, 1995; Smetana, 1989). What these studies uncovered is that

interactions having to do with morality tend to focus on the effects those actions have

upon the welfare of others. In the case of moral events, children experience such inter-

actions as victims, perpetrators, or third person observers. Interactions around societal

conventions, in contrast, tend to focus upon the norms or rules that would apply, along

with feedback regarding the social organizational function of the norm (e.g., to maintain

classroom order).

These domain-related patterns of social interaction are also associated with differing

forms of emotional experience and expression (Arsenio & Lover, 1995). Moral transgres-

sions, especially among young children, are often accompanied by strong emotions of

anger or sadness as well as empathy for victims. Positive moral interactions such as sharing

are associated with emotions of happiness. Social conventions on the other hand arouse

little affect among children. This holds for situations in which children both comply with

and violate social norms (Arsenio & Lover, 1995). Negative emotional expressions over

violations of convention tend to come from adults rather than children.

In recent years, these discoveries of the early emergence of basic moral concepts and

their apparent universality has led some scientists to speculate that morality is largely

based upon inherent biological tendencies that are the result of our evolutionary history

(Krebs, 2011). This basic distinction is maintained even by children suffering from

autism (James & Blair, 2005; Leslie, Mallon, & DiCorcia, 2006). There is strong evidence

that infants are sensitive to the emotional distress of others (Martin & Clark, 1982) and

capable of identifying facial expressions conveying particular emotional states (Lude-

mann, 1991), all of which is consistent with the view that humans are primed to respond

with empathy towards others (Emde, Hewitt, & Kagan, 2001). These early intuitions,

however, do not qualify as moral knowledge, and they do not account for the develop-

mental changes in moral reasoning that we see in children and adolescents. This evolu-

tionary priming forms part of the early experience that children employ in constructing

moral concepts, and the related emotions and feelings incorporated within early moral

schema also undoubtedly play a role in moral motivation (Arsenio & Lover, 1995). Over

the course of a lifetime, the cognitions constructed around moral experiences alter or

enter into the regulation of affect and the ﬁnal appraisal of social situations (Pizarro &

Bloom, 2003). Moral development and effective moral education incorporate emotion

as part of the informational and affective experiences that generate reﬂection and the

construction of moral knowledge and reasoning.

More recently, researchers employing neuroscience methodologies have provided

evidence that individuals evoke different cognitive processing for moral and conven-

tional social judgments (Lahat, Helwig, & Zelazo, 2012). These researchers caution,

however, against over-interpretation of their ﬁndings as indicative of an innate neural

124 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

substrate for moral or conventional judgments and point instead to the likelihood that

implicit cognitive processing, executive functioning, and cognitive load are differentially

implicated in moral and social conventional reasoning in distinct domains (Lahat et

al., 2012). In sum, the basic ﬁnding of a conceptual distinction between morality and

convention has proven to be among the most robust phenomena uncovered by psycho-

logical research.

The Personal

Within domain theory morality and social convention are further differentiated from judg-

ments about issues that individuals consider to be personal (Nucci, 1996, 2013a). While

morality and convention deal with aspects of right and wrong and with interpersonal regu-

lation, concepts of personal issues refer to the private aspects of one’s life such as the con-

tents of a diary and issues that are matters of preference and choice (e.g., friends, music,

hairstyle). It has been proposed that the establishment of control over the personal emerges

from the need to establish boundaries between the self and others and that this need is crit-

ical to the establishment of personal autonomy and individual identity (Lagattuta, Nucci, &

Bosacki, 2010; Nucci, 2013a). Interview studies have shown that children and adolescents in

multiple cultures judge personal issues to be within their jurisdiction regardless of parental

decisions. Evidence has also been presented that parents across a wide range of cultures

(Assadi, Smetana, Shahmansouri, & Mohammadi, 2011; Lins-Dyer & Nucci, 2007; Nucci

& Smetana, 1996; Nucci & Weber, 1995; Yamada, 2004; Yau & Smetana, 2003) provide for

a zone of personal discretion and privacy with children as young as three to four years of

age (see Nucci, in press a, for a comprehensive review). Justiﬁcations that children and their

parents provide concerning why behaviors and decisions should be treated as personal and

within the children’s jurisdiction focus on the role of such choices in developing autonomy,

personal identity, and moral rights of the children or adolescents to have such discretion

(for reviews see Nucci, in press a; Smetana, 2011).

Observational studies of mothers and young children in American middle class homes

have explored the social interactions between parents and young children around per-

sonal domain issues (Nucci & Weber, 1995). The research indicates that parents provide

opportunities for children to engage in choice around decisions about food, dress, play

activities, and playmates. Mothers also tend to negotiate with children in situations

involving resistance by the child to maternal commands around issues such as clothing

choices that have a substantial personal component. Mothers were observed negotiating

with their children over these personal events 51% of the time. However, they only nego-

tiated with the children 1% of the time about moral or conventional issues (Nucci &

Weber, 1995). The ﬁndings are consistent with the results mentioned above indicating

that parents respond differentially to their children’s personal, moral, and conventional

domain behaviors.

DEVELOPMENT WITHIN DOMAINS

Conceptual development within each of the domains just described follows a distinctive

pattern. Development of morality is structured by changes in underlying conceptuali-

zations of justice and human welfare (Damon, 1977; Nucci, in press a; Nucci & Turiel,

2007). Development of convention is structured by underlying conceptualizations of

social systems and social organization (Turiel, 1983). Finally, development of concepts

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 125

about the personal is structured by underlying conceptions of self, identity, and person-

hood (Nucci, 2001, 2009). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to present a detailed

description of each developmental sequence. What follows are descriptions of general

patterns for development of morality and convention with references to sources where

detailed descriptions can be found.

Moral Development

Morality begins in early childhood with a focus upon issues of harm to the self and

others. Davidson, Turiel, and Black (1983) found that, up to about age seven, moral judg-

ment is primarily regulated by concerns for maintaining welfare and avoiding harm and

that it is limited to directly accessible acts. Young children’s morality is not yet structured

by understandings of fairness as reciprocity. Thus, young children have a difﬁcult time

making moral judgments when the needs of more than one person are at stake (Damon,

1977). In addition, there is little subtlety in young children’s concepts of moral harm

and in their moral evaluations of situations involving helping others (Eisenberg, 1986;

Nucci & Turiel, 2007). Research on children’s distributive and retributive justice reason-

ing shows that, as they develop, children form increased understandings of benevolence,

equality, reciprocity, and equity (Damon, 1977, 1980; Irwin & Moore, 1971; Lapsley,

1982). The pattern of development reﬂects an increased ability of children to coordinate

elements of moral situations within their justice reasoning. In the case of distributive

justice, this increased capacity to handle complexity leads to a linear growth pattern of

steady incremental changes in moral thinking. When it comes to reasoning about issues

of human welfare, however, the developmental pattern is more complex.

Recent studies of children’s reasoning about situations involving harm or helping

behavior indicate that concepts about moral culpability and obligation follow a U-shaped

pattern rather than a linear one. As we saw above, very young children understand

that unprovoked hitting and hurting are morally wrong. As one would expect, reason-

ing about this straightforward moral transgression does not change with age (Nucci,

in press a; Nucci & Turiel, 2007). What does change, however, are children’s concepts

about indirect forms of harm such as not letting another person know that he or she

has dropped money and keeping it for oneself instead. When this situation is placed in

a real-life context, eight-year-old children and 16-year-old adolescents are more likely

to judge keeping the money as wrong than are 13-year-olds. Moreover, 13-year-olds are

far more likely to claim that they would have a right to keep the money (Nucci, 2013a;

Nucci & Turiel, 2007). Interestingly, 13-year-old children are as likely to return the

money as eight- and 16-year-olds when the person who drops the money is described

as handicapped. Across ages, nearly all children agree that it would be wrong to keep

the money in that case. Thus, the reasoning of the 13-year-olds does not ﬁt a pattern of

purely instrumentalist moral thinking. Instead, several factors related to their increased

understanding of the social world are converging to make the moral evaluation of the

situation more variable. Development allows young adolescents to recognize the moral

ambiguity of non-prototypical situations. In this case, the loss of the money did not

occur because of an action taken by the observer. Furthermore, in the absence of an

observer, the money would have been lost in any case. To quote one of the adolescents in

the study, “It’s [the money] in never land.” Added to this moral ambiguity is the confu-

sion adolescents experience as they sort out the differences in meaning among free will,

personal choice (as in the personal domain), and a moral right to do something. For the

126 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

eight-year-olds, there is no problem; the situation holds no ambiguity. There is a simple

line drawn between the money and its owner. By age 16, most of the adolescents in the

study had resolved the complexities identiﬁed by the 13-year-olds and, after acknow-

ledging the ambiguities inherent in the situation, judged that the act of observing ren-

dered the bystander obligated to return the money.

Similar U-shaped developmental patterns were found for helping behavior in early

adolescents (Nucci & Turiel, 2007) and again in young adults (early twenties) (Eisenberg,

Cumberland, Guthrie, Murphy, & Shepard, 2005). These ﬂuctuating patterns of develop-

ment signal periods of increased attention to new elements of moral situations and mark

transitions to more complex integrations of moral thought (Gerskoff & Thelen, 2004).

Social Convention

The development of concepts about convention presents an oscillating pattern between

periods—phases afﬁrming the importance of convention and phases negating the basis

of the afﬁrmations of the prior phase. Seven levels of development have been described

from early childhood to early adulthood (Turiel, 1983). Evidence for these levels comes

from cross-sectional (Nucci, Becker, & Horn, 2004; Turiel, 1983), cross-cultural (Hollos,

Leis, & Turiel, 1986), experimental (Nucci & Weber, 1991), and longitudinal studies

(Hollos et al., 1986). Concepts about convention reﬂect the person’s underlying con-

ceptions of social organization. A typical 10-year-old, with a concrete sense of social

hierarchy, afﬁrms convention as serving to maintain social order. For example, people in

charge of schools make up rules to keep everyone from running in the hallways.

At the next level of development, typical of early adolescence, children enter into

a negation phase in which the prior basis for afﬁrming convention becomes viewed

through the lens of the arbitrariness of the norms and their status as “simply” the dic-

tates of authority. Later, in middle adolescence, the dismissal of convention is replaced

by an understanding that conventions have meaning within a larger framework. Thus,

conventions are seen as normative and binding within a social system of ﬁxed roles and

obligations. The oscillating pattern of development of convention indicates the difﬁculty

children have in accounting for the function of arbitrary social norms and illustrates the

slow process of reﬂection and construction that precedes the adolescents’ view of con-

vention as important to the structuring of social systems.

Personal

Age-related changes in concepts about personal issues reﬂect shifts in children’s and ado-

lescents’ understandings of “self ” and the role that control over one’s personal domain

has for constructing and maintaining autonomy and personal identity (Nucci, 1996).

With age, children move from views of the personal zone in terms of physical appear-

ance, characteristic activities, and personal friendships to a deepening sense of personal

choice and privacy as essential to the establishment of an interiorized “self ” comprising

one’s personal thoughts, preferences, and tastes that are manifested in one’s outward

appearance, actions, and relationships.

An aspect of development of the personal is the expansion of what children and adoles-

cents consider as personal matters under their own control instead of parental or societal

authority (Smetana, 2011). These shifts are primarily around issues of safety or conventions

of dress and other forms of personal expression that children and adolescents increasingly

view as important to their sense of autonomy and emerging individual identity.

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 127

CROSS-DOMAIN INTERACTIONS AND COORDINATIONS

In making decisions in everyday life, people make use of the social knowledge systems that

will help them understand problems or situations. Some social behaviors, such as unprovoked

hitting of another person, are clear-cut moral situations that require only the application of

moral knowledge to make a decision. In a similar way, we could describe situations that

would involve the application of knowledge about social convention. Many social situations,

however, contain elements that may draw upon one or more conceptual frameworks. This

can occur when elements of fairness or human welfare intersect with societal conventions or

when conventions impede or regulate what the individual considers a personal matter.

An historical example of domain overlap between morality and convention would

be the Jim Crow laws that segregated Whites and Blacks in the United States in the last

century. While Jim Crow laws are a part of the past, many examples of domain overlap

confront students in contemporary society. For example, issues of peer inclusion and

exclusion are very much a part of the everyday life of students. Instances of peer exclu-

sion and harassment draw upon conceptions of peer conventions of dress and behavior,

personal domain construals of the selection of personal associations and friendships,

and moral concepts of harm and fairness (Horn, 2003; Killen, Lee-Kim, McGlothlin, &

Stangor 2002; Killen & Rutland, 2011). According to domain theory, how an individual

will reason about such issues of overlap will depend partly upon whether the person sub-

ordinates the given situation to a single domain of fairness, social organization, or per-

sonal considerations, or whether the person attempts to coordinate the elements of the

issue (Turiel & Smetana, 1984). From an educational point of view, what these examples

make clear is that facilitating social and moral growth addressing the full complexity of

social and moral issues requires attention to a multi-faceted system of social and moral

development rather than a single structure of moral judgment (Nucci, 2001).

DOMAIN THEORY: APPLICATION TO MORAL EDUCATION

The application of domain theory to moral education has been continuous with the

broader family of developmental and constructivist approaches to education (Nucci,

2001). This includes attention to the social and emotional needs of children through

classroom structure and responses to student behavior as well as the integration of moral

education through the regular academic curriculum. Domain theory adds to existing

developmentally based educational approaches a set of analytic tools for identifying

moral and non-moral aspects of educational experiences along with domain appropri-

ate teacher strategies for fostering moral and social development (Nucci, 2009). What

follows is an overview of research ﬁndings about best practices for establishing a class-

room climate of care and trust that are conducive to moral education, about develop-

mental trends in student misbehavior and transgressions in the school-based context,

and about domain appropriate teacher responses to student transgressions. The ﬁnal

subsection is a discussion of uses of domain theory to foster social and moral develop-

ment through the academic curriculum.

Classroom and School Climate, Rules, and Responses to Transgression

Classroom climate. As was outlined above, moral and social knowledge emerges out of

the child’s interactions in the social world. Applying this basic premise to the classroom

128 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

means that a fundamental source for students’ social development is the social climate

of the classroom and school and the approach that teachers and administrators take

toward managing student behavior. Research on the emotional correlates of morality by

Arsenio and Lover (1995) sustains basic claims of the importance of attention to affec-

tive experiences for moral development. In particular, this work points to the centrality

of establishing caring classroom environments (Noddings, 2002) that foster construc-

tion of a worldview based on “goodwill” characterized by the presumption that social life

operates, for the most part, according to basic moral principles of fairness and mutual

respect (Arsenio & Lover, 1995).

This is more than providing students with consistent moral messages in an environ-

ment of physical safety. As Noddings (2002) explains, critical to the establishment of

a caring orientation is the capacity to accept care from others. This requires a school

and classroom climate in which students can afford to be emotionally vulnerable and in

which that vulnerability extends to the students’ willingness to risk engagement in acts of

kindness and concern for others (Noddings, 2002). This notion of an ethic of care relates

to a more general conceptualization of a school and classroom environment based upon

trust (Watson, 2003, this volume). Trust entails affective connections of care regulated by

moral reciprocity and continuity. Trust is basic to the construction of an overall sense of

community that is one of the primary predictors of prosocial conduct in schools (Bat-

tistich, 2008).

One aspect of school culture that impacts the climate of trust is the extent to which

students engage in social exclusion. Children’s engagement in social exclusion reﬂects

a complex set of social judgments drawing on understandings across all three social

cognitive domains. Issues of peer exclusion and harassment (and bullying) call upon

conceptions of peer conventions of dress and behavior, personal domain construals of

interpersonal associations and friendships, and moral concepts of harm and fairness

(Horn, 2003; Killen et al., 2002). Establishing a climate of trust requires an inclusive

classroom and school culture. However, focusing only on the fairness or harm involved

in social exclusion will not address the motivations and justiﬁcations of young persons

whose focus is on the importance of peer conventions or their sense of control over per-

sonal associations (Killen & Rutland, 2011). Addressing this complexity entails an open

climate of dialogue in which children work through the non-moral justiﬁcations that

are undergirding their willingness to engage in what would otherwise be perceived as an

immoral act of interpersonal harm (Killen & Rutland, 2011).

Establishing classrooms and school communities that foster trust and mutual respect

should extend beyond the elementary years that Watson (2003, this volume) identiﬁes

as a critical period for meeting the attachment needs of young children. Discussed in

greater detail below, adolescence is a period of transition with its own emotional vulner-

abilities that make establishing an atmosphere of trust important for secondary educa-

tion as well (Eccles, Wigﬁeld, & Schiefele, 1998). The broader process of establishing

trust in school is beyond the scope of this chapter and is covered in several other places

in the handbook (see esp. Watson, this volume). We now turn to ways in which attention

to social cognitive domain can contribute to an understanding of age-related shifts in

student behavior and to the approach that educators might take concerning school rules

and classroom management.

Domain Appropriate Responses to Student Transgressions. The emergence of dis-

tinct domains of social knowledge corresponds to qualitatively differing social interactions

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 129

associated with each domain (Turiel, 1983). As one might expect, research demonstrates

that children evaluate teacher responses to transgressions in terms of correspondence to

the domain of the transgressions (see Nucci, 2001 for a comprehensive review). Interview

studies conducted with preschool (Killen, Breton, Ferguson, & Handler, 1994) and elemen-

tary and middle school children in grades 2–7 (Nucci, 1984) indicate that students evaluate

teacher responses to transgressions in terms of their concordance with the domain-deﬁning

features of the actions. Domain concordant responses to violations of conventions, such as

being out of line or not raising one’s hand before speaking, would consist of teacher state-

ments referring to the governing rules or of statements engaging students to consider the

disruptions to classroom organization or social functioning that result from the transgres-

sions. Directing students to consider the consequences of such actions upon the welfare of

others, on the other hand, would be responses concordant with moral transgressions. Stu-

dents across grade levels were found to rate domain concordant responses higher than they

rated domain discordant ones (e.g., providing a moral response to a conventional transgres-

sion) (Killen et al., 1994; Nucci, 1984). Fifth graders and above extended their evaluations

of responses to transgression such that teachers who consistently responded to transgres-

sions in a domain concordant manner were rated more knowledgeable and effective than

teachers who consistently provided domain discordant responses (Nucci, 1984).

Observational studies of the relative frequency of rule violations in ﬁrst- through

eighth-grade classrooms have consistently indicated that the vast majority of misconduct

is with respect to violations of conventions rather than moral transgressions (Blumen-

feld, Pintrich, & Hamilton, 1987; Nucci & Nucci, 1982a). This indicates that attribut-

ing all classroom management issues to morality runs the risk of diminishing the force

of moral argumentation by using it primarily for issues of convention. This limits the

extent to which classroom interactions can be employed to engage students’ thinking

about convention.

School Rules, Misbehavior, and Periods of Transition. The importance of attending

to students’ concepts of social convention becomes more apparent when we consider

data indicating that the rate at which students engage in violations of classroom conven-

tion is associated with students’ modal level of development in the conventional domain.

Violations of convention in elementary and middle school are highest in grades 3–4 and

7–8, which correspond to ages at which children are respectively at Levels 2 and 4, nega-

tion of concepts about convention (Nucci & Nucci, 1982a; see Table 8.1). As one might

expect from the developmental literature, early adolescence is an especially challenging

period for teachers and administrators because signiﬁcant changes are occurring in all

three domains of social understanding.

With respect to social convention, young adolescents enter a phase (Level 4) in which

they question the conventions they upheld during middle childhood (Nucci et al., 2004;

Turiel, 1983). The support for conventions of maintaining basic order (e.g., to keep kids

from running in the hallways) evaporates as young people reconsider the arbitrariness

of conventional regulation and conclude that they are “simply the arbitrary dictates of

authority” (Turiel, 1983). In many cases, students at this level of development continue

to adhere to conventions to maintain smooth relationships with teachers or to avoid

sanctions. However, students at this level are unable to produce a conceptual rationale

for the conventions themselves (Nucci et al., 2004). Thus, there is greater tendency for

students at this point in development to engage in the violation of school conventions

(Geiger & Turiel, 1983; Nucci & Nucci, 1982a).

130 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

By middle adolescence, about age 15 or the sophomore year of high school, most

American adolescents have moved to Level 5 reasoning about social convention

(Nucci et al., 2004). At Level 5, conventions are viewed as constituent elements of the

social system structuring hierarchical relations and coordinating interactions among

members of a society or a societal institution such as the school (Turiel, 1983). In their

longitudinal study, Geiger and Turiel (1983) found that students who had moved to

Level 5 in their concepts of convention engaged in signiﬁcantly fewer violations of

school conventions.

Coincident with these developmental shifts in concepts of convention are basic

changes in the ways that adolescents draw boundaries between convention and matters

of personal prerogative and privacy (Smetana, 2011). Areas where conventions and

norms of family and school touch upon personal expression (dress, hairstyle), per-

sonal associations (friendships), personal communication (phone, email), access to

information (internet), and personal safety (substance use, sexuality) become zones

of dispute wherein adolescents lay increasing claims to autonomy and control. Across

cultures, family disputes are largely about such issues as adolescents appropriating

greater areas of personal jurisdiction from what had previously been areas of paren-

tal inﬂuence or control (Smetana, 2011). Students also lay claim to zones of per-

sonal privacy and prerogative within school settings (Smetana & Bitz, 1996). They are

somewhat more willing, however, to accept conventions regulating conduct within

the school settings such as public displays of affection (kissing in public) that would

be considered personal in non-school contexts (Smetana & Bitz, 1996). Neverthe-

less, the combined developmental phase of negation of convention with the exten-

sion of what is considered personal renders the period of early adolescence a difﬁcult

transition.

In discussing educational implications of this period of early adolescent transition,

Smetana (2005) refers to the work of Eccles and her colleagues as providing a window

into the mismatch that currently exists between school policies and adolescent accept-

ance of these normative issues. The researchers (Eccles et al., 1993, 1998) have provided

evidence that, despite the increased maturity of adolescents, middle and junior high

schools emphasize greater teacher control and discipline and offer fewer opportunities

for student involvement in decision-making, choice, and self-management than do ele-

mentary school classrooms. Accordingly, Eccles and her colleagues (1998) reported that

the mismatch between adolescents’ efforts to attain greater autonomy and the schools’

increased efforts at control result in declines in junior high school students’ intrinsic

motivation and interest in school.

From a developmental perspective, the typical responses of schools to this period of

transition amount to a defensive maneuver while waiting out a passing developmental

storm. An alternative approach recommended by Eccles (Eccles et al., 1993, 1998) is that

schools include more opportunities for students to have input into the norms govern-

ing classroom practices. More speciﬁcally, Smetana’s (Smetana & Bitz, 1996) research

and the observational studies of student transgressions (Geiger & Turiel, 1983; Nucci

& Nucci, 1982a) indicate that the focus of such student input and discourse should be

around matters of social convention and personal prerogative. Other work exploring the

impact of developmental discourse around issues of convention has demonstrated that

such discussion can effectively contribute to students’ levels of understanding about the

social functions of such norms (Nucci & Weber, 1991).

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 131

While the majority of adolescent misconduct concerns issues of convention, some

of the efforts to establish autonomy and identity entail risk taking and moral transgres-

sions. For example, shoplifting tends to peak between the ages of 12 and 14 years (Wolf,

1992). This corresponds to the transitional period in early adolescent moral reasoning

uncovered in our recent work (Nucci, 2013a; Nucci & Turiel, 2007). The Swiss develop-

mentalist Fritz Oser (2005) has argued that educators should view such moral miscon-

duct as an essential component for moral growth and seize upon moral transgressions as

an opportunity for what he refers to as “realistic discourse.” Oser’s position is that “neg-

ative morality,” like mistakes in math class, comprises the basis from which a genuine

moral epistemology and moral orientation arise. His approach to moral misconduct in

adolescence is to make it the subject of moral discourse in which students must confront

one another’s actual misdeeds, interpretations of their motives, and the consequences of

their actions (Veugelers & Oser, 2003). Oser’s approach builds from prior work done in

the Kohlberg tradition on the “just community” (see Oser, this volume). The processes

advocated by Oser have been employed with considerable success by others working

within the Kohlberg tradition (Blakeney & Blakeney, 1991) to alter the misconduct and

recidivism among behaviorally disordered children and adolescents.

Domain Appropriate Uses of the Academic Curriculum

Attending to students’ social experiences can contribute much to their social and moral

development. However, schools can extend their impact upon moral and social develop-

ment through the academic curriculum in several ways. First, the academic curriculum

contains many instances in the context of literacy and social studies of stories or events

that replicate or reinforce social and moral values that students may be addressing in

their everyday experiences. Uses of literature employing constructivist teaching methods

with attention to children’s developmental levels has been shown to impact both social

and emotional learning (Elias et al., this volume) as well as moral development (Nucci,

2001, 2009). Second, the formal curriculum moves the students’ knowledge base beyond

their own historical or cultural framework and has the potential to motivate students to

project themselves as members of a global community with responsibilities for the social

welfare of persons beyond their immediate experience. Table 8.1 presents an outline of

how curricular content in literature and social studies might be matched with domain

and developmental level corresponding to grade and approximate ages.

Developmentalists dating back to Kohlberg (Kohlberg & Mayer, 1972) have cast the

aims of moral education in progressive terms of enabling individuals to evaluate society

and their own behavior from a critical principled moral perspective. For Kohlberg, this

aim was to be achieved by stimulating students to move toward principled stages of

moral reasoning. From a domain theory perspective, this same progressive aim is strived

for by fostering student skills to apply their moral understandings critically to evaluate

social norms and personal conduct at all points in development rather than at a develop-

mental end point (Nucci, 2001, 2009). In both cases, the underlying progressive educa-

tional ideology has a shared concept of moral education as fostering the capacity of

students to act from a critical moral perspective. This social justice potential of schools

has received a lot of attention in recent years, some of it quite critical. Critics such as

Diane Ravitch (2005) express a concern that attention to moral issues such as social class

or racial inequalities competes with the primary academic aims of education. Such criti-

cisms might have merit if attention to moral development came at the cost of academic

Table 8.1 Development Within Domains and Curriculum Implications by Grade Level

Grade/Age Moral Conventional Personal

Kindergarten–Grade 2

5–7 years

Development: Recognize basic obligations

for helping, sharing, avoiding harm.

Difﬁculty coordinating needs of more than

one person simultaneously. Moral decisions

based on salience of moral elements.

Curriculum: Reading as context

presenting conﬂicts of interest between two

or more characters. Engage students in

generating resolutions based on moral

reciprocity.

Development: Conventions tied to observed

regularities; conform to general patterns.

Curriculum: Use stories to identify

contextual variations in conventions.

Emphasis in early grades (K-4) on direct

experiences with classroom and family norms.

Development: Control over personal tied to

physical aspects of self. Identity and autonomy

shown in appearance to others. Autonomy as

literal ownership and control over “self.”

Curriculum: Readings present protagonists

engaging in choices about clothing, etc. to

illustrate identity. Differentiate contexts in

which personal choice and conventions prevail.

Grades 3–4

8–9 years

Development: Direct reciprocity; tit-for-tat

mentality; indirect harm same as direct

harm; equal distribution is fair.

Curriculum: Reading as context for

deepening morality based on reciprocity

and coordination of needs of two or more

people.

Development: Negation of convention

based on observed inconsistencies and

exceptions to norms.

Curriculum: Reading and social studies

as contexts for discussions about impact on

social order and behavior of altering or

eliminating conventions presented in

historical or ﬁctional settings.

Development: Transition toward features of

grade 5.

Curriculum: Reading instruction as context

for identifying and discussing role of personal

choices of activities in establishing identity.

Grades 5–6

10–11 years

Development: Concerns for equity, others’

special needs taken into account. Beginnings

of attention to non-moral factors adding

complexity to moral situations.

Curriculum: Reading as context for

discussion about equity in fair distribution

and opportunities for participation. Discuss

fairness of social exclusion (can be linked to

personal domain and identity). Use social

studies to begin consideration of social equity.

Development: Afﬁrmation and concrete

understanding of conventional rules to

maintain order and given top-down by

social authority ﬁgure.

Curriculum: Reading and social studies

to consider role of conventions in

establishing social organization. Social

studies make concrete comparisons of the

role conventions in different social systems.

Development: Emphasis of self-deﬁnition is

about child’s displayed behaviors, talents, and

skills. Control over personal allows behaviors

and activities that deﬁne self.

Curriculum: Reading for discussing

relation between personal choice and identity.

Discuss connections between proﬁciency in

personal activities and sense of self. Essential

to minimize comparisons with others as basis

for academic motivation.

Grades 7–9

12–14 years

Development: Consolidate relations

between equity and equality in concepts of

fairness; attention to factors of ambiguity

and complexity in moral situations.

Conﬂation of personal choice with “rights”;

increased non-moral action choices in

ambiguous contexts.

Curriculum: Literacy – consider indirect,

ambiguous harm; evaluate arguments about

moral decisions based on self-interest that

entail competing interests and ambiguous

harm. Use social studies to evaluate

historical events with actors engaged in

actions entailing moral ambiguity. Begin

discussions of moral considerations of

social practices and conventions.

Development: Negation of convention as

arbitrary dictates of authority; acts

evaluated apart from rules.

Curriculum: Use social studies for

discussion, reﬂection, and essays about

conventions associated with social hierarchy

and organization. Consider historical and

societal conventions and their role in

variations on social systems. Discuss

construction of norms for hypothetical

social systems; compare with social systems

presented in social studies.

Development: Self is described as one’s

beliefs, values, and thoughts. Control over

personal is to maintain “uniqueness” in terms

of superﬁcial differences from others. Early

adolescent expands activities and decisions

considered “personal” and not a matter of

parental or other external authority.

Curriculum: Use literature to consider

relations between personal decisions about

dress, friends, activities, etc. in generating

individuality. Discussions: What it means to

be individual versus “phony”; whether two

people can share the same values, beliefs, and

preferences and remain individuals.

Grades 10–12

15–17 years

Development: Increased ability to coordinate

multiple factors in moral situations. Clear

differentiation between personal choice and

moral rights.

Curriculum: Use literacy and history to

prompt discussions and essays about

situations pitting moral considerations

against societal convention and personal

interest. Use moral considerations to evaluate

the norms and practices of social systems.

Emphasis on cross-domain coordinations.

Apply moral considerations to personal

decisions on global warming, etc.

Development: Systematic concepts of social

structure emerge; conventions understood

as normative and binding to maintain social

systems and reﬂect social organization and

hierarchy; social group members expected

to adhere to conventions.

Curriculum: Use literature and social

studies for comparative examination of

societies as normative systems. Connect

with moral considerations of respect for

cultural differences.

Development: Self now deﬁned in terms of

inner essence or “true” self shown by personal

decisions and actions. Control over personal

allows self-discovery and coordination of

what is outside with what is inside the “true”

self.

Curriculum: Use literature to examine

personal choices of characters in forming

their identities. Use of history and literature

to consider contexts in which it is legitimate

to prioritize personal choice and expression

over social norms and moral considerations.

134 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

success. In fact, there is mounting evidence that attention to social and moral develop-

ment may enhance academic performance (Berkowitz & Bier, this volume; Durlak &

Weissberg, 2007). Finally, encouraging students to employ moral knowledge to improve

society is a goal broadly shared by educators, including proponents of mainstream char-

acter education (Lickona, 2004).

We have begun to examine the efﬁcacy of attending to social cognitive domain within

the context of academic instruction (Nucci, 2009). In one of our studies, we addressed

whether attention to the domain of social values makes a difference in the development

of children’s moral and social conventional concepts addressed in a set of eighth-grade

American History and English composition courses (Nucci & Weber, 1991). We iden-

tiﬁed issues from American history that were primarily moral, social conventional, or

mixed domain. For example, moral issues included slavery and the forced removal of

Native Americans from their lands; conventional issues included the adjustments in

modes of dress, work conventions, and dating patterns that resulted from the inﬂux of

immigrants and the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society; and mixed domain

issues included changes in laws permitting women to vote.

Students were randomly assigned to one of three instructional conditions: (a) conven-

tion, (b) moral, and (c) domain appropriate. Instruction was carried out by an experi-

enced teacher in pullout sessions supplementing their regular classroom activities. Each

instructional period included 30 minutes of discussion and an essay homework assign-

ment based upon the questions used to frame each session. Students in the convention

condition were provided questions and teacher statements that directed them to focus

upon social norms and social organization, in essence treating all issues as if they were

matters of convention. Students in the moral condition were directed to treat these same

issues in terms of considerations of fairness and social justice. Students in the domain

appropriate condition were asked ﬁrst to consider normative, conventional aspects and

then to consider the justice or welfare features of the issue. Students in the domain appro-

priate condition were also asked to integrate the moral and conventional features of the

event. In other words, students were taught to interpret, analyze, and evaluate situations

as primarily social, moral, or mixed. Results indicated that attention to domain had an

impact on student learning.

Students who received instruction focusing in only one domain (social conventional

or moral) advanced in their level of reasoning or understanding in that domain but not

in the other. Only the students in the domain appropriate (mixed social conventional

and moral) instructional condition developed in both domains. A second noteworthy

ﬁnding of the study had to do with how students dealt with overlapping issues. Stu-

dents who had domain appropriate teaching were the only ones to coordinate elements

spontaneously from both domains. In contrast, two thirds of the students in the moral

instructional condition subordinated mixed domain issues entirely to their moral ele-

ments, and a majority of students in the convention instructional condition subordi-

nated mixed domain issues to their conventional elements.

This last set of ﬁndings has particular relevance for developing students’ capacities

for critical moral reﬂection. Convention condition students were hampered in attend-

ing to the moral implications of situations. Moral condition students prioritized the

moral elements of the same situations but did not consider the social organizational

ramiﬁcations. In real life, however, there are always organizational costs to any change in

the conventional social structure. For example, a single-minded attention to needs for

Domain Theory and Moral Education s 135

gender equality in careers leaves unanswered any number of practical questions about

how to restructure the conventions of the family, role expectations, and practical duties.

The domain appropriate condition students prioritized the moral elements of these situ-

ations, but they also acknowledged the ramiﬁcations of changing conventional organiza-

tion and offered suggestions for how those changes might be resolved. Our interpretation

of the ﬁndings from this study is that instructional conditions that differentially draw

attention to social conventional, moral, or mixed-domain components of the same issues

can inﬂuence students’ capacities to coordinate and transfer forms of reasoning through

social cognitive domains about multifaceted, value-laden, real-world issues.

Findings from instructional intervention studies such as the study presented above

demonstrate how social cognitive domain theory approaches to moral education can

inform and enhance teaching practices that build and coordinate conceptual structures.

Using these constructed understandings, students reason about social-conventional and

moral issues and events in both real life and within the academic curriculum. Social

cognitive domain theory provides a 2-for-1 framework that aligns with and adds greater

dimension to formative and performance-driven academic standards. It supports

instruction that fosters intellectual, social, and moral development simultaneously by

building upon higher-order reasoning skills that transfer across academic disciplines

(Nucci, 2009). Thus, this approach to moral education addresses the concerns of schools

for academic achievement noted by Davidson and Lickona (this volume) while also con-

tributing to students’ moral development.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This chapter provided an overview of research on children’s moral and social develop-

ment indicating that morality forms a developmental system that is distinct from our

concepts of societal convention and personal choice and privacy. That research provides

the basis for reﬁnements in the developmental approach to moral education that attends

to the contextual and experiential origins of students’ concepts in each domain rather

than subsuming social and moral development within a single developmental system.

Observational studies have demonstrated that classroom social interactions differ

by social cognitive domain, and interview studies have shown that students evaluate

teacher responses to students’ social transgressions in terms of their concordance with

the domain of the transgression. Finally, intervention studies have demonstrated that

attending to social cognitive domain has salutary effects both on students’ development

within domains and in their tendencies to integrate knowledge from multiple domains

when dealing with complex social issues.

In recent work, we have integrated this developmental research into the design of

a teacher education program for the preparation of elementary school teachers. That

effort has demonstrated that pre-service teachers can acquire the skills to integrate

lessons of domain appropriate moral and social values with the regular academic curric-

ulum and their approach to classroom management (Nucci, Drill, Larson, & Browne,

2005; Nucci, 2013b; Nucci & Powers, 2013). We continue to assess the degree to which

pre-service teachers trained in the Developmental Teacher Education (DTE) program at

the University of California, Berkeley integrate and continue to use methods and guiding

concepts of social cognitive domain theory in their classrooms (Nucci & Powers, 2013).

We are also currently exploring how urban public middle school history teachers with

136 s L. Nucci and D.W. Powers

varying levels of professional experience foster students’ development of conventional

and moral reasoning. In this ongoing project, teachers plan lessons and deliver instruc-

tion guided by a social cognitive domain approach.

Our goal in conducting this research has been to provide educators and educational

researchers with insights to improve their developmentally based moral and social educa-

tion rather than to promote a speciﬁc set of practices or curricula. There are undoubt-

edly many ways in which classroom teachers and school administrators can integrate

attention to moral and social development within educational practices that go beyond

the suggestions that we have proposed (Nucci, 2009). What is critical from our point of

view is that moral education acknowledges the complexity inherent in social and moral

decision-making and in the construction of a moral life. What we have learned in the

past four decades about children’s moral and social development is that moral education

requires a variegated approach. Moral development does not move toward an end-point

at which moral principle triumphs over non-moral considerations. Nor does moral

education result in the establishment of decontextualized virtue. Instead, what we can

hope to accomplish is to develop young people capable of handling moral complexity,

ambiguity, and contradiction in ways that will help them to lead moral lives and to con-

struct a more moral society.

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140

DEVELOPING ETHICAL EXPERTISE AND MORAL

PERSONALITIES

Darcia Narvaez and Tonia Bock

The cognitive and neuro-sciences have made great strides in uncovering the nature of

human psychobiology in recent years. Moral educators have yet to make much of their

ﬁndings. The three theories presented here capitalize on recent research that has implica-

tions for building moral personalities and cultivating morally-adept citizens (Lapsley &

Narvaez, 2004b; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2009).

Adaptive Ethical Expertise blends delibera-

tive and intuitive development for ethical expertise development. The Integrative Ethical

Education model is a step-by-step model intended for integration into academic instruc-

tion at all levels. Triune-Ethics Theory, a more comprehensive theory of moral develop-

ment rooted in neurobiological processes, has implications for moral education as well.

All three theories address the development of moral personhood.

Approaches to education for moral character are typically divided into two opposing

views that are rooted in different philosophical paradigms (see Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006;

Narvaez, 2006). One philosophical paradigm represents particularist claims regarding

virtue with a focus on the agent and the deliberate cultivation of virtues or excellences

(MacIntyre, 1981). Of primary concern is the nature of a good life and the character-

istics necessary to live a good life (e.g., Anscombe 1958; Hursthouse 1999; McDowell

1997). The individual is mentored in virtue by the community and gradually takes on

the responsibility for discovering and cultivating the virtues and values inherent in the

self (Urmson, 1988). From this perspective nearly everything in life has moral meaning,

from friend selection to leisure activities. Traditional character education emerges from

this view (Wynne & Ryan, 1993), although it seems to have misappropriated how virtue

is best cultivated (Kohn 1997a, 1997b; Narvaez, 2006), resulting in minimal outcome

success (Leming, 1997).

The contrasting view emphasizes universalist claims regarding justice and reason-

ing (Kant, 1949), addressing what is the right thing to do in a particular moral situation

(e.g., Hare 1963; Rawls, 1971). Moral conduct is that which accords with applicable prin-

ciples, derived from reasoning, for a particular situation and only in select slices of life.

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 141

In comparison to virtue theory, typically, few demands are made on individuals, leaving

many life choices out of the moral realm. Moral obligation is reduced to that which can

be formulated with respect to universal moral principles and becomes what is universally

applicable (e.g., Kant’s Categorical Imperative).

If what is right for anyone must be right for everyone in relevantly similar circum-

stances, then what is right must be such as can be recognized and acted upon by

persons who possess very little in the way of developed moral character.

(Norton, 1991, p. xi)

Instead, to make moral judgments, one adopts a “moral point of view,” a position

detached from personal traits and conditions. Although Kohlberg’s ideas about the rela-

tion between personality and judgment shifted repeatedly, he considered character dis-

positions inadequate for moral judgment and emphasized reasoning (Kohlberg, 1981).

Approaches to moral education rooted in Kohlberg’s work typically do the same.

There has been a longstanding assumption adopted from philosophy that moral

reasoning drives moral behavior (e.g., Blasi, 1980; Kohlberg, 1981; Piaget, 1932). Most

famously, Kohlberg emphasized deliberative moral reasoning and its advancement

through moral dilemma discussion (Blatt & Kohlberg, 1975), what can be called rational

moral education (Narvaez, 2006). The robust ﬁndings in moral judgment research not-

withstanding (e.g., Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999), the centrality of delibera-

tive reasoning in behavior is a fading paradigm across psychology. To be sure, extensive

reasoned argument has been instrumental in shutting down discriminatory practices,

such as slavery, and instituting more equitable practices, such as women’s suffrage. Despite

the indisputable importance of moral reasoning, there is only a weak link between moral

reasoning capacities and moral action (Blasi, 1980; Thoma, 1994). In fact, the disparity

between knowing and doing has become increasingly evident across psychological ﬁelds,

instigating a paradigm shift in mainstream psychology (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999).

In the paradigm new to psychology, unconscious parallel processing becomes

dominant whereas conscious, serial processing becomes secondary (Bargh, 1997). Most

information processing is automatic (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999); most decisions are

made without deliberation (Hammond, 2000); and most activities are governed by pre-

conscious, automatic processes (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Bargh & Ferguson, 2000).

In other words, humans have two types of “minds” (e.g., Kahneman, 2003). The delib-

erative mind processes information serially and consciously. The intuitive mind is com-

prised of multiple non-conscious, parallel-processing systems that learn implicitly from

environmental patterns and behaves automatically, often without awareness (Hogarth,

2001). The intuitive mind develops appropriate sensibilities and habitual responses from

immersed experience and comprises the “habits” that are valued in traditional charac-

ter education whereas the conscious mind cultivates the sophisticated moral reasoning

valued by rational moral education.

Despite the perceived conﬂict between these two approaches to moral character educa-

tion, they can be viewed as complementary (O’Neill, 1996). The Aristotelian emphasis

on intuition development evident in traditional character education is more empiri-

cally aligned with everyday human behavior. Yet it is deliberative reasoning that facil-

itates complex understandings of justice. Therefore, character education should not be

approached as Either/Or, as a choice between rational moral education and character

142 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

education, or between deliberative reasoning and intuition development (Lapsley &

Narvaez, 2006). Both systems are required for moral agency. The intuitive mind makes

decisions and takes actions without conscious awareness most of the time. Yet the delib-

erative mind is vital for guiding intuition development and countering poor intuitions

(Groopman, 2007; Hogarth, 2001). A person without one or the other is missing a crit-

ical tool for moral personhood.

In light of the dual nature of the human mind and the importance of both reasoning

and intuition, how should we approach moral character education? A perspective that

melds the paradigms is moral expertise development.

ADAPTIVE ETHICAL EXPERTISE AS A FRAMEWORK FOR DEVELOPING

ETHICAL CHARACTER

The two seemingly opposed approaches to learning and becoming a moral person are

brought together in expertise development, which emphasizes the development of

appropriate intuitions and sophisticated reasoning. Experts-in-training are immersed

in environments that foster good intuitions about the domain while receiving explicit

guidance as to how to think about solving problems in the domain. For example, a

working chef practices under the watchful eye of the master chef who models, guides,

and advises.

What do we mean by expertise? Experts differ from novices in several key ways. They

have more and better organized knowledge (e.g., Sternberg, 1998). They have declarative

(explicit), procedural (implicit), and conditional knowledge. In short, they know what

knowledge to access, which procedures to apply, how to apply them, and when. They per-

ceive the world differently, noticing underlying patterns and discerning necessity where

novices see nothing remarkable (Johnson & Mervis, 1997). Expert behavior is often

automatic and effortless (Vicente & Wang, 1998). Experts function as more complex

adaptive systems in their approaches to solving problems in the domain whereas novices

miss the affordances for action available in the circumstance (Hatano & Inagaki, 1986;

Neisser, 1976). Experts have highly developed intuitions as well as explicit knowledge.

Moreover, experts’ sense of self is highly connected to their efﬁcacy. They are motivated

for excellence in their domain of expertise.

The proposal here is that we should treat moral virtue or excellence as a type of adap-

tive expertise (Narvaez, 2006; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005), much like the ancients did

(e.g., Aristotle, 1988; Mencius, 1970). A virtuous person is like an expert who has highly

cultivated skills—sets of procedural, declarative, and conditional knowledge—that are

applied appropriately in the circumstance. In other words, moral exemplars in the fullest

sense demonstrate moral (knowing the good) and practical wisdom (knowing how to

carry it out in the situation). Moral expertise is applying the right virtue in the right

amount in the right way at the right time.

Expertise is a set of capacities that can be put into action. Moral experts demonstrate

holistic orientations (sets of procedural, declarative, and conditional knowledge) in one

or more of at least four processes critical to moral behavior: ethical sensitivity, ethical

judgment, ethical focus, and ethical action (Narvaez & Rest, 1995; Rest, 1983). See Table

9.1 for a list of skills. Experts in Ethical Sensitivity are better at quickly and accurately

discerning the nature of a moral situation and determining the role they might play. They

take on multiple perspectives in an effort to be morally responsive to others. Experts in

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 143

Ethical Judgment reason about duty and consequences, and apply personal ethical codes

to solve complex problems. Experts in Ethical Focus cultivate self-regulation that leads

them to prioritize and deepen commitment to ethical goals. Experts in Ethical Action

know how to keep their spirit focused on the moral goal and implement an action plan

step by step. They are able to step forward and intervene courageously for the welfare of

others. Experts in a particular moral excellence have more and better organized know-

ledge about it, have highly tuned perceptual skills for it, have deep moral desire for it, and

have highly automatized, effortless responses. In short, they have more content know-

ledge and more process knowledge, more moral wisdom and more practical wisdom.

As novices in virtually every domain including the moral, children are best taught

using novice-to-expert instruction (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Experts-in-

training build implicit and explicit understandings about the domain, engaging both the

deliberative and intuitive minds. Immersion in the domain occurs at the same time that

explanations are presented, thereby cultivating both intuitions and deliberative under-

standing (Abernathy & Hamm, 1995). Their practice is focused, extensive, and coached

through contextualized, situation-based experience. The learning environment is well-

structured, providing appropriate and accurate feedback (e.g., the chef-in-training gets

feedback both from the physical results of food prepared and from the coach who judges

it). Through the course of expertise training, perceptions are ﬁne-tuned and developed

into chronically accessed constructs; interpretive frameworks are learned and, with

practice, applied automatically; action schemas are honed to high levels of automaticity

(Hogarth, 2001). What is painfully rule-based as a novice becomes, with vast experience,

automatic and quick for an expert (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1990).

Nevertheless, there appear to be vastly different mindsets that inﬂuence perception

and orientation in moral behavior. Triune-ethics theory seeks to name these disparate

orientations and ﬁnd their roots.

Table 9.1 Ethical Skills and Suggested Subskills

ETHICAL SENSITIVITY ETHICAL JUDGMENT

Understand emotional expression Understand ethical problems

Take the perspectives of others Using codes & identifying judgment criteria

Connecting to others Reasoning critically

Responding to diversity Reasoning ethically

Controlling social bias Understand consequences

Interpret situations Reﬂect on process and outcome

Communicate well Coping and resiliency

ETHICAL FOCUS ETHICAL ACTION

Respecting others Resolving conﬂicts and problems

Cultivate conscience Assert respectfully

Help others Taking initiative as a leader

Being a community member Planning to implement decisions

Finding meaning in life Cultivate courage

Valuing traditions & institutions Persevering

Developing ethical identity & integrity Working hard

144 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

TRIUNE-ETHICS THEORY

Triune-ethics theory (TET; Narvaez, 2008) is derived from psychological, evolution-

ary, and neuro-sciences. Unlike most moral psychological work which has focused

on the neocortex (e.g., deliberate reasoning), TET and its four goals address multiple

neural systems including the subcortical, self-regulatory, and motivational structures

(for more detail, see Narvaez, 2008, 2012, 2014). First, it emphasizes motivational ori-

entations driven by unconscious emotional systems that predispose one to process

information and react to events in particular ways. Second, MET helps explain indi-

vidual differences in moral functioning. Individuals differ in early emotional experi-

ences that inﬂuence personality formation and brain wiring and in turn affect

information processing. Third, TET suggests the initial conditions for optimal human

moral development, the evolved developmental niche (EDN; Narvaez, Gleason et al.,

2013). The EDN emerged over 30 million years ago, designed to match up with the

maturational needs of young social mammals, and was slightly altered during human

evolution (Konner, 2010). The characteristics include: naturalistic childbirth with no

interference with timing, separation of mom and baby or induced pain; breastfeeding

two to ﬁve years; nearly constant touch; responsiveness to the cues of the child; free

play; positive social support and multiple adult caregivers. Despite data showing that

all these practices positively inﬂuence child health and wellbeing for the long term, the

EDN is no longer closely followed in the USA (Narvaez, Panksepp, Schore, & Gleason,

2013). Interestingly, these practices also inﬂuence moral development (Narvaez &

Gleason, 2012; Narvaez, Wang et al., 2013). Fourth, TET offers an explanation for the

power of situations in inﬂuencing moral responses.

The moral self, moral identity, and moral motivation are areas of increasing interest

to researchers (e.g., Hardy & Carlo, 2005, 2011). Blasi has suggested that a person with

a moral identity has moral constructs central to the self and that moral identity acts

as an important source of motivation for moral action (Blasi, 1983, 1985). TET con-

trasts with Blasi’s view. Focusing on a person’s subjective view, the central question is

not about the strength of one’s moral motivation but what moral motivation they have

at the time of inquiry. All organisms are goal-driven, including humans (Bogdan, 1994).

It is the nature of organisms to aim for what they perceive to be good in the moment so

that, subjectively, a person feels they are behaving morally (although reﬂection later may

change opinion). Persons select goals they think are the best in the circumstances, never

consciously choosing goals they think are evil or bad (although see “selﬁsh goal theory”

Huang & Bargh, in press). Even those who behave violently are motivated to right a

wrong (i.e., revenge is felt as “good” in the brain; de Quervain et al., 2004). Those who

are impulsive feel that their goals are “right” in part because they feel them so strongly.

Thus, from the individual’s viewpoint in the moment (the subjective perspective), the

person is behaving morally. However, from an objective viewpoint, self-centered behav-

ior that harms or mistreats others is generally considered to be less morally defens-

ible. For example, although egoism and selﬁshness can be touted as moral (see Weiss,

2012), they are usually considered outside of many moral frames. However, TET does

not dismiss some mindsets as non-moral but notes different types. The view here is

that everyone has a subjective moral identity—one oriented towards the perceived good.

What varies, based on experience and situation, is the type of moral identity active at any

given moment.

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 145

Triune-ethics theory identiﬁes three basic attractors for moral functioning based on

brain evolution: Safety, Engagement, and Imagination (MacLean, 1990; Narvaez, 2008,

2014). The three basic orientations represent different global brain states that emerge

from the interplay and dominance of different emotion systems or their suppression. As

a result, each brain state or mindset differentially affects perception, information process-

ing, affordances (perceived action possibilities), and goals, propelling moral action on an

individual or group level. See Figure 9.1 for types and subtypes.

The ﬁrst mindset, Safety, involves the extrapyramidal action nervous system (MacLean,

1990: “R-complex”; Panksepp, 1998). The Ethic of Safety is based primarily in systems

that revolve around survival and thriving in context, instincts shared with all animals

and present from birth. The emotion systems of fear, anger, and exploration dominate

here along with behaviors such as territoriality, imitation, deception, struggles for power,

maintenance of routine, and following precedent. How much these “survival systems”

dominate personality depends in part on early life experience because caregiving shapes

self-regulatory systems and the capacity of the frontal lobe to control these subcortical

systems. Excessive stress in early life can undermine self-regulatory capacities and wire

the brain for threat reactivity (Porges, 2011), leading to a greater propensity to use a

Safety Ethic in social interactions (Narvaez, 2014).

Like Kohlberg’s preconventional stages, the Safety Ethic is concerned with

self-preservation and personal gain, although it operates primarily implicitly. Sur-

vival systems dominate thought and behavior when the person or ingroup is threat-

ened (MacLean, 1990). When the Safety Ethic is triggered, the brain is mobilized for

Engagement Engagement

Focus on

possibility

Presence

Conditioned past

Wallﬂower

Detached

Personal

Calm

Communal

Mindful

morality

Engagement

Distress

Fear and anger

are dominant

emotions

Care and play

are dominant

emotions

Bunker

Vicious

Safety Safety

Imagination Imagination

Figure 9.1 Triune-ethics Theory Types and Subtypes.

146 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

self—drawing energy away from executive function, hampering higher-order think-

ing and compassion. Defenses go up, in-group/out-group differences, rivalry, and the

pecking order are stressed, and superorganismic (mob) mentality can be set in motion

(Bloom, 1995). A moral self that is dominated by the Ethic of Safety may orient to ﬂour-

ishing through the acquisition of wealth, status, and power (Bunker Safety), or submis-

sion to hierarchy and order (Wallﬂower Safety). Perceiving threat easily, it is moral to

hold in contempt out-group members or those who violate the moral rules. The virtues

of the Safety Ethic are fortitude, loyalty (for protection, not out of love), and obedience.

Providing a safe, secure environment that meets young children’s basic needs circum-

vents establishing the dominance of a Safety Ethic and promotes the ethics systems that

better represent human aspirations, Engagement and Imagination. Nevertheless, control

systems in the prefrontal cortex are not fully developed until the middle 20s (Giedd et al.,

1999) and are easily overtaken by the hindbrain’s self-protective impulsivity (Bechara,

2005) so that adults must still offer guidance to youth at least until the brain is fully

developed, in the third decade of life.

The Ethic of Engagement involves the emotional systems (care, play) that drive us

towards intimacy, identiﬁed by Darwin as the locus of human moral sense (Darwin,

1871; Loye, 2002). Although evolution has prepared the human brain for sociality and

moral agency, early life care must follow the evolved developmental niche described

above for optimal moral development. Proper care during early life is required for

normal formation of brain circuitries necessary for successful social engagement,

many of which are dominated by the right brain which develops rapidly in the ﬁrst

years of life. With expected care, the foundations of love and trust grow in early life

(Narvaez & Gleason, 2012), leading to values of compassion, openness, and tolerance

in adulthood (Eisler & Levine, 2002; Greenspan & Shanker, 2004). Figure 9.2 illus-

trates foundations of sociomoral development provided by the evolved developmental

niche, each layer interactively building on prior layers including brain system “wiring”

and thresholds for hormones and neurotransmitters. In mammals, poor early care

leads to brain-behavioral disorders, evident in poor sociality and greater hostility and

aggression towards others (Kruesi et al., 1992; Weaver, Szyf, & Meaney, 2002). The self

in the present, in relationship, in emotional context, drives the relational moral orien-

tation towards trust, love, reciprocity, and moral action (Engagement) when a person’s

brain/body systems are well formed. With poor or misdeveloped self-regulation, per-

sonal distress may ensue instead in social situations, undermining moral functioning

(see Schore, 1994).

A disposition for Engagement, dominated by right-brain functioning, represents the

heart of moral wisdom and virtue. Engagement has a greater capacity for meaningful

relationships and a deeper sense of connection to others, a sense of respect and cher-

ishment, and a sense of responsibility for the welfare of others (Oliner & Oliner, 1988;

Narvaez, 2014). In fact when the Safety Ethic runs amok, the more humane engagement

ethic may provide a counter pressure if awakened, shifting from the Safety Ethic’s self-

aggrandizement and urge for dominance to compassionate response.

The third ethical mindset, the Ethic of Imagination, uses the recently evolved parts

of the brain, the neo- and prefrontal cortices. The Imagination Ethic responds to and

coordinates the intuitions and instincts of the Engagement Ethic and the Safety Ethic, as

well as sorting out the multiple elements involved in moral decision making (e.g., one’s

immediate and meta-goals, principles, mood, reactions, and those of others for whom

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 147

the situation matters). The Imagination Ethic has the ability to countermand instincts

and intuitions with “free won’t” (Cotterill, 2000), the ability that allows humans through

learning and willpower to choose which stimuli are allowed to trigger emotional arousal

(Panksepp, 1998). For example, an enraged parent can counter the instinct to beat up

a disobedient child. The Imagination Ethic also has the capacity to create narratives to

guide behavior or rationalization. The deliberative mind, largely through the brain’s

“interpreter” (Gazzaniga, 1985), is facile in explaining any behavior, sometimes unaware

that it is “making things up.” Typically, the interpreter adopts the narratives of a cultural,

familial, or afﬁliative group. The social narrative is further reﬁned into a personal nar-

rative, both of which guide behavior (Grusec, 2002).

Like the brain areas related to the Engagement Ethic, the development of brain areas

related to the Ethic of Imagination requires a nurturing environment. The prefrontal

cortex and its specialized units take decades to fully develop and are subject to damage

from environmental factors (e.g., Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio,

1999). Underdevelopment of the right brain can lead to a Detached Imagination that

makes moral disengagement easy (Bandura, 1999).

Empathic

Interaction

Coordinated

Intersubjectivity

Social Self-

regulation

Neurobiological

Self-regulation

Figure 9.2 Baselines for Virtue Development Co-constructed by Early Experience.

148 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

When integrated with the Engagement Ethic, the Imagination becomes Communal

Imagination and provides for a greater moral sense than the other ethics. Although

humans have evolved to favor face-to-face relationships and have difﬁculty imagin-

ing those not present (such as future generations), the work of the Imagination Ethic

provides a means for a sense of community that extends beyond immediate relations.

Indeed, a self grounded in the Imagination Ethic is broadly aware of human possibil-

ities, of the power of co-creation of community in the moment. Such a self is broadly

reﬂective, demonstrating exquisite self-command for envisioned goals. The virtues of

the Imagination Ethic are the ability to step back from the present moment, take mul-

tiple perspectives, and imagine alternative futures. However, when the Imagination Ethic

is corralled by the Safety Ethic (e.g., using planning and reasoning skills for aggressive

self-protection or emotional detachment), much harm can be perpetrated in the world

through Vicious Imagination.

As noted, when the brain capacities for sociality and abstraction are not fully nur-

tured or damaged, the Safety Ethic becomes the default system, at one or both basic levels

(aggressive, Bunker Morality, or passive, Wallﬂower Morality) or at the elaborated levels

(Vicious or Detached Imagination). Although parenting provides the most important

context for early brain wiring for engagement and imagination, educators can have an

inﬂuence on which ethic dominates the classroom. The brain remains plastic so that

Engagement and Communal Imagination can be cultivated even in schools. The Integ-

rative Ethical Education model seeks to provide stepwise guidance to nurturing ethical

expertise in the engagement and imagination ethics.

STEP-BY-STEP INTEGRATIVE ETHICAL EDUCATION

The Integrative Ethical Education model (IEE; Narvaez, 2006, 2007) provides an inten-

tional, holistic, comprehensive, empirically-derived approach to moral character devel-

opment. It is informed deeply by both ancient philosophy and current science about

what contributes to human ﬂourishing. As Aristotle pointed out, human ﬂourishing

necessarily includes individuals and communities, a perspective corroborated by the

biological and social sciences. No one survives or ﬂourishes alone. In fact, humans are

biologically wired for sociality and love (Maturana & Verden-Zöller, 1996). With the

proper care humans are deeply empathic, with ethics of high engagement and imagina-

tion (Narvaez, 2013, 2014).

The IEE model is presented in a step-by-step format. Ideally the steps take place

simultaneously, but for new teachers, deploying and adding one step at a time is recom-

mended.

Step 1: Establish a caring relationship with each student

Fundamental to any mentoring relationship is establishing a caring connection, the

type of relationship that allows mutual inﬂuence for mutual beneﬁt. Greenspan and

Shanker (2004) describe how parental interaction with infants establishes the cogni-

tive propensities for learning and social being. Ideally, the family home is a source for

deep emotional nourishment as pleasurable intimate relationships foster capacities

for open communication and growth. But this has become increasingly difﬁcult to

maintain, due in part to both parents working and a variety of distracting activities.

In a day when children are emotionally malnourished, much rides on the adults they

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 149

see every day, educators. In fact the most important protective factors against poor

outcomes for a child are caring relationships, ﬁrst, with an adult in the family, and

second, with an adult outside the family (Masten, 2003). Why is caring so vital? As

mammals, humans are primarily social-emotional creatures, evolutionarily prepared

for the rewards of caring, emotionally-engaged relationships. The cool logic of a non-

emotional Dr. Spock can be a sign of pathology, not health (Damasio, 1999). It is

through caring relationships and supportive climates that teachers nurture motivation

and an engagement ethic.

When students have good relationships with their teachers, they are more likely to

feel welcome in the classroom and have a greater sense of belonging, which is related

to higher motivation and achievement (Klem & Connell, 2004; McNeely, Nonnemaker,

& Blum, 2002; Roeser, Midgley, & Urdan, 1996). Teacher caring and support are related

to increased student engagement in learning (Libbey, 2004), especially among at-risk

students (Connell, Halpern-Felsher, Clifford, Crichlow, & Usinger, 1995; Croninger &

Lee, 2001). Teachers can individualize their care for students, like a good parent. Of

course, this means getting to know the child, respectfully, as much as possible. Some

students with troubled backgrounds require a longer warm-up period before they

trust the teacher, requiring teacher persistence and patience (see Watson, 2003, this

volume). Establishing a caring relationship is easier with some children than others,

and is easier for elementary teachers than high school teachers who see many students

relatively brieﬂy. Nevertheless, as long as teachers maintain a humane classroom, stu-

dents will be more likely to feel safe and engaged in learning, fostering moral character

at the same time.

Human minds and hearts are prepared for emotional signaling and emotional

motivation (Greenspan & Shanker 2004; Lewis, Amini, & Lannon, 2000; Panksepp,

1998). If these are ignored or mishandled by the educator, then the Safety Ethic may

predominate. The student may then spend most energy towards self-protection,

leaving little energy for openness to learning. When the educator establishes healthy

emotional communication with each student she provides the bridge for communica-

tion and inﬂuence. Without it, academic motivation is reliant on the residue of family

motivation (which may be enough for some students but not others, e.g., Li, 2005;

Steinberg, 1996).

Step 2: Establish a climate supportive of achievement and ethical character

In simpler times, children learned morality through direct experience with adults during

the basic chores and activities of life at home and in the local community. Today, chil-

dren’s lives are generally divorced from the everyday life of most adults and take place in

the artiﬁcial learning settings, revolving around the classroom and school. So now it is

here they learn how to get along with peers, how to participate in group work and deci-

sion making, how to be a citizen, and many other skills they take with them into adult-

hood. “The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life” so schools should

be constructed as social institutions that integrate intellectual and moral development

through active learning (Dewey, 1909/1975, p. 14).

Organizational climates and cultures shape perceptions and behavior (Power, Higgins,

& Kohlberg, 1989; Power & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008). In the broad sense, the climate

includes the structures of the social environment, the overt and hidden systems of rewards

and punishment, the goals and aspirations of the social group, and the general discourse

150 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

about goals. In the speciﬁc sense, climate has to do with how people treat one another, how

they work and make decisions together, what feelings and expectations are nurtured.

Considerable research points to the importance of a caring classroom and school

climate for optimal student outcomes. When classrooms have climates of mutual respect

and caring—when the teacher fosters the Ethics of Engagement in self and students—

everyone feels greater physical and psychological safety, leading to a greater sense of

belongingness (Anderman, 2003; Ma, 2003). Bonding to school not only increases school

engagement and commitment to learning among students (Goodenow, 1993), but also

growth in achievement (Libbey, 2004) and healthy development generally (Catalano,

Oesterle, Fleming, & Hawkins, 2004; Catalano, Toumbourou, & Hawkins, this volume).

Caring classrooms and schools with high expectations for achievement and behavior are

related both to high achievement and to moral behavior (Battistich, 2008; Zins, Weiss-

berg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004). According to Solomon, Watson, and Battistich (2002),

caring school and classroom communities have the following characteristics:

s 3TUDENTSAREABLETODEMONSTRATEAUTONOMYSELFDIRECTIONANDINmUENCETEACHER

decisions.

s 3TUDENTSINTERACTPOSITIVELYWITHONEANOTHERCOLLABORATINGANDDISCUSSINGCOURSE

content and classroom policies.

s 3TUDENTSARECOACHEDONSOCIALSKILLSASTEACHERSEXHIBITWARMACCEPTANCEOFSTU-

dents, providing support and positive modeling.

s 4HETEACHERPROVIDESMULTIPLEOPPORTUNITIESFORSTUDENTSTOHELPONEANOTHER

s )N A CARING CLASSROOM DISCIPLINE IS NOT PUNISHMENT BUT IS COACHED CHARACTER

development.

Educators can emphasize both engagement and imagination ethics, asking “who should

I be?” as well as “how can we show respect for one another?” and “How can we help one

another feel cared for in the classroom?” Schools can establish programs that take up

part of the burden for developing empathy and fostering compassion that families are

unable to address (e.g., Schonert-Reichl, Smith, Zaidman-Zait, & Hertzman, 2012).

Steps 1 and 2 are integral to best-practice teaching, yet in an era where children are

exposed to many negative role models through popular culture, these two steps may no

longer be enough to help students develop moral character (Narvaez & Lapsley, 2008).

The next three steps identify more intentional cultivation of moral character.

Step 3: Teach ethical skills across the curriculum and extra-curriculum using a

novice-to-expert pedagogy

As mentioned above, training for ethical expertise includes developing appropriate

intuitions and sophisticated deliberations in at least four areas: Ethical Sensitivity,

Ethical Judgment, Ethical Focus and Ethical Action. But what competencies can or

should be emphasized in schools? The Integrative Ethical Education model suggests

skills and subskills for each of the four processes. These are skills critical for social and

emotional intelligence and living a good life generally (see Elias et al., this volume).

These skills are also important for active global citizenship. In a multipolar world, edu-

cators can help students minimize the Safety Ethic and develop engagement and imag-

ination. See Table 9.1 for the suggested skills for each of the four processes described

earlier.

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 151

How should moral character education be structured? As in training for expertise, edu-

cators should instruct both the deliberative mind and the intuitive mind. The intuitive

mind is cultivated through immersion in active environments where skills are practiced

and developed. This involves imitation of role models and appropriate feedback from the

environment about what works. Social-cognitive moral personality theory suggests that

a moral personality is built from social and practical experiences that foster automatized

moral schemas (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2004a; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2005; Narvaez, Lapsley,

Hagele, & Lasky, 2006).

The deliberative mind can be coached in ways that ﬁne-tune action and in metacog-

nitive skills such as how to select good environments for one’s own intuition develop-

ment. By providing developmentally-sensitive theoretical explanation and dialogue, the

deliberative mind builds understanding that coordinates implicit knowledge. Teachers

are, ﬁrst and foremost, role models. They can model a moral orientation to life by think-

ing aloud about their own moral decisions, telling stories about striving for moral goals,

reading stories that develop students’ moral imaginations.

Learning involves an active and interactive process of transforming one’s conceptual

structures through selective attention and by relating new information to prior know-

ledge (Anderson, 1989). Best-practice instruction provides opportunities for students

to develop more accurate and better organized representations and the procedural skills

required to use them (Ibid.). In order to do this, children must experience an expert-in-

training pedagogy for each skill that they learn. Teachers can set up instruction to help

students develop appropriate knowledge by designing lessons according to the following

four levels of activities (Narvaez, 2005; Narvaez, Bock, Endicott, & Lies, 2004):

Level 1: Immersion in examples and opportunities. Teachers provide models and

modeling of the goal, draw student attention to the “big picture” in the subject area,

and help the students learn to recognize basic patterns.

Level 2: Attention to facts and skills. As students practice subskills, teachers focus

student attention on the elemental concepts in the domain in order to build more

elaborate concepts.

Level 3: Practice procedures. The teacher allows the student to try out many skills

and ideas throughout the domain to build an understanding of how skills relate and

how best to solve problems in the domain.

Level 4: Integrate knowledge and procedures. The student ﬁnds numerous mentors

and/or seeks out information to continue building concepts and skills. There is a

gradual systematic integration and application of skills and knowledge across many

situations.

The ethical expertise approach was initially developed in the Minnesota Community

Voices and Character Education project. In the ﬁnal evaluation year, after being famil-

iarized with the framework of skills and pedagogical approach, teacher teams deter-

mined which skills their students needed and which academic courses would integrate

which skills. Using materials provided by the project designers and teacher-designed

lessons, the skills approach had a signiﬁcant effect on students in schools that

152 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

implemented broadly over one year’s time in contrast to a comparison group and to

low implementing schools (see Narvaez et al., 2004; see also Narvaez, 2009, 2012;

Narvaez & Bock, 2009; Narvaez & Endicott, 2009; Narvaez & Lies, 2009).

Step 4: Foster student self-authorship and self-regulation

Self-regulation (equilibration) has been a central, driving force of evolution and devel-

opment within organisms (Darwin, 1871). Self-authorship (autopoeisis) is what living

systems do (Varela, Maturana, & Uribe, 1974). Self-authorship requires a coordinated

partnership between the different minds (intuition and deliberation) and prosocial

ethics (engagement and imagination) in a type of reﬂective abstraction (Piaget’s prise de

conscience; Gruber & Voneche, 1995). Plato understood human existence to be a problem

to the self, “the problem of deciding what to become and endeavoring to become it”

(Urmson, 1988, p. 2). In other words, the ﬁnal responsibility for character development

lies with the individual. In their choices and actions, orientations and time allocations,

individuals address the question: Who should I be? Who are my role models and how do I

get there? In an enriched moral environment, students are provided with tools for self-

regulation and self-authorship in character formation. As Aristotle pointed out, indi-

viduals need mentors for self-regulation and self-development (self-authorship) until

they can guide them through the selection of virtuous friends and activities (Urmson,

1988).

Individuals can be coached not only in skills and expertise, as noted previously, but

in domain-speciﬁc self-regulation (Zimmerman, Bonner, & Kovach, 2002). The most

successful students learn to monitor the effectiveness of their problem-solving strategies

and, when necessary, alter their strategies for success (Anderson, 1989). Coaching for

self-regulation requires enlisting the deliberative mind to select the environments from

which the intuitive mind learns effective behaviors, thereby accelerating implicit learning

(Hogarth, 2001). For example, different intuitions are developed when reading a good

book than when playing violent video games. Teachers thinking aloud about solving

challenging problems and their decision making processes provides students with exam-

ples of how to monitor progress during goal execution. Students can learn the meta-

cognitive skills that moral experts have, such as noticing moral problems, guiding one’s

attention away from temptations, self-cheerleading when energy fades, and selecting or

redesigning an environment to maximize goal completion (Zimmerman, 1998).

Step 5: Restore the Village: Asset-Building Communities and Coordinated

Developmental Systems

It bears emphasizing that the good life is not lived in isolation. One does not ﬂourish

alone. IEE is implemented in and with a community. It is the community which estab-

lishes, and nourishes, the individual’s moral voice, providing a moral anchor, and offer-

ing guidance as virtues are cultivated. Indeed, both Plato and Aristotle agreed that a good

person is above all a good citizen. Hunter (2000) suggests that we ﬁnd the answers to our

existential questions in the particularities that we bring to a civic dialogue: “Character

outside of a lived community, the entanglements of complex social relationships, and

their shared story, is impossible” (p. 227). It is in the community that students apply and

hone their ethical competencies.

Truly democratic ethical education empowers all involved—educators, community

members, and students—as they form a learning community together, developing ethical

Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities s 153

skills and self-regulation for both individual and community actualization (Rogoff, Tur-

kanis, & Bartlett, 2001). The purpose of ethical behavior is to live a good life in the com-

munity. Together community members work out basic questions such as: How should

we get along in our community? How do we build up our community? How do we help

one another ﬂourish? Each individual lives within an active ecological context (Bronfen-

brenner, 1979) in which, ideally, the entire community builds ethical skills together.

Overall, we can strengthen the connections among children’s life spaces: home, school,

and community at various levels. Children who live with coordinated systems are adap-

tationally advantaged (Benson, Leffert, Scales, & Blyth, 1998). The type of person a child

becomes is determined in large part by the dynamic interaction among community,

family, and culture. Caring communities with high expectations and involved adults are

more likely to raise morally-engaged citizens.

SHAPING MORAL PERCEPTIONS

“[Television is] a cultural environment into which our children are born, and which

tells all the stories . . . who tells the stories of a culture really governs human behav-

ior. It used to be the parent, the school, the church, the community. Now it’s a

handful of global conglomerates that have nothing to tell, but a great deal to sell.”—

George Gerbner.

(Oliver, 2005)

At no time in US history have children’s minds been more shaped by non-family

members, speciﬁcally advertisers who peddle dissatisfaction with self and the need for

consuming an endless array of products (Halton, 2008). Neuroscience research shows

the effects of popular media on brain maturation, and much of it is worrisome (Kasser,

2002; Quart, 2003). The Ethic of Safety is activated by media from which we develop a

“mean world syndrome,” desensitization towards violence (it is fun and rewarding) and

towards victims of violence, culminating in a general lack of trust in others (Gerbner,

1994). The Ethic of Safety is aggravated when we see what others have that we do not

(“afﬂuenza,” Hamilton & Denniss, 2005), promoting addictive status seeking. The Ethic

of Imagination is hijacked by these artiﬁcially-manufactured desires so that virtue is

converted into being a good consumer. The Ethic of Engagement, being physiologically

“in tune” with others, is experienced less as interaction with others occurs more and

more through electronic means (Vandewater, Bickham, & Lee, 2006).

Children learn cultural narrative structures and when to use them through direct

experience with stories that provide reasons for action (Narrative Practice Hypothesis,

Hutto, 2007). Teachers can foster narratives to counter the hedonism and status-enhanc-

ing messages of popular media and instead foster discourse that draws attention to moral

issues and the child’s social purpose. Teachers can encourage students to construct their

own moral goals and moral life story (e.g., How are you going to make the world a better

place for everyone? What skills do you need for it?). Individuals operate according to the

narratives they tell themselves (McAdams, 1993; Schank, 1995). Adults help structure

personal narratives by the types of questions they ask (e.g., How did you help someone

in school today? What positive actions did you take over vacation? What positive goals do

you have for today? Nelson & Gruendel, 1981). Teachers (and adults in general) inﬂuence

children’s narratives by what they emphasize, expect, and encourage in the environments

154 s D. Narvaez and T. Bock

they design for children. Teachers can ﬁll children’s memories with positive concrete

experiences in which they helped others and teachers can remind them of these times.

Providing satisfying social experiences that engage student emotion and motivation

can shape not only perceptions and sensibilities but also goals and dreams. By provid-

ing a purposeful prosocial narrative, the child internalizes a personal narrative and the

deliberative mind’s imagination is engaged in activities that bring it about.

CONCLUSION

Educators play a large role in the moral character development of their students. The

Integrative Ethical Education model encourages educators to take on an intentional, con-

scientious approach to cultivating moral character. Speciﬁcally, IEE informs educators

how they can cultivate their students’ expertise in Multi-Ethic Theory’s engagement and

imagination ethics. IEE’s step-by-step, empirically-derived framework is intended to

help educators actualize their important responsibility of helping develop their students’

moral character.

NOTES

1. Note, we use ethical and moral interchangeably.

2. Earlier versions of these booklets were created under grant #R215V980001 from the US Department of Educa-

tion Ofﬁce of Educational Research and Improvement to the Minnesota Department of Children, Families and

Learning during 1998–2002 and can be downloaded at http://cee.nd.edu/curriculum/curriculum1.shtml.

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159

DEVELOPMENTAL DISCIPLINE AND

MORAL EDUCATION

Marilyn Watson

Moral and character educators working from different philosophical perspectives have

generally acknowledged a major role in students’ moral development of the “hidden cur-

riculum” manifested in the interpersonal environment of schools and classrooms. Dewey

(1909/1975), for example, argued that the mode of social life and the nature of the school

community were far more important factors in students’ moral growth than direct moral

instruction. Ryan (1986), from a quite different theoretical perspective, argues that “very

little of the moral education that inevitably occurs in the schools is formally recorded in

lesson plans, curriculum guides, or behavioral objectives.” Rather, students develop their

“conceptions of what being a good person entails” from such aspects of schooling as

the rules that are or are not enforced, the rituals and procedures of daily classroom life,

the expectations for and consequences of their behavior, and their teachers’ warnings,

advice, and manner (p. 228).

During the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century, classroom instruction in American

schools focused on civic and moral virtues as well as academic competencies (Brophy,

2006). However, by the 1970s, Americans lost interest in instruction in virtues and

morals in public education and good classroom management was about efﬁcient control

of students to optimize academic learning. The earlier view that classroom management

and discipline might also serve to support students’ social and moral development had

retreated so far into the background that Walter Doyle’s chapter on classroom organ-

ization and management for the 1986 Handbook of Research on Teaching didn’t even

mention potential social or moral outcomes.

Facing increased pressure for higher levels of academic learning, teachers felt the

need for easy and efﬁcient classroom control. Efﬁcient and sometimes elaborate

control systems, generally guided by behaviorism’s view of children as self-interested

and needing to be shaped by extrinsic reinforcers, spread to schools across the

country. Lee Cantor’s Assertive Discipline (1976) is probably the best known and most

inﬂuential of these approaches. By 1980, the predominant approach to classroom

160 s M. Watson

management and discipline in American public schools focused on control of stu-

dents’ behavior by rewards and punishments and traditional citizenship goals had

been largely abandoned.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

On a parallel track, alternative approaches to managing children’s behavior were

generated out of clinical psychology (Dreikurs, 1968; Glasser, 1969; Gordon, 1974).

These approaches viewed children as having legitimate needs and their misbehavior

the result of choosing misguided means for satisfying those needs. Consistent with

developmental/constructivist principles, these approaches stress the importance of

understanding the reasons behind student misbehavior, but they are not truly devel-

opmental. Students are viewed like adults as rational, capable, and socially oriented.

Teachers are advised to remain impersonal, as an analyst might, and help students

recognize and solve their own problems. For example, Gordon stresses the import-

ance of demonstrating attention to and concern for a student’s problem by reﬂecting

the student’s statements back, thereby helping the student clarify the problem and

ﬁnd his or her own solution. While respectful of a child’s good will and autonomy, he

does not make adjustments for children’s developmental levels, but rather argues that

the methods he advocates “are equally useful and applicable for effective teaching of

students of all ages” (1974, p. 13).

Glasser’s approach stresses the importance of positive teacher–child relationships

and of involving students in class meeting to create class rules and discuss problems.

His ten step approach to student misbehavior begins by improving the teacher–student

relationship, involves several steps in which the student describes and strives to create

a plan to stop the misbehavior, and ends with three successive steps, in-school suspen-

sion, home suspension, and ﬁnally removal to another institution. Again, there is much

in this approach that is consistent with developmental theory—involving students in

setting and discussing rules and problems, and allowing students time to think about

their behaviors and solve their own problems. However, the lack of a focus on adult guid-

ance is strikingly non-developmental.

The third therapeutic approach developed by Rudolf Dreikurs has a darker view of

children and a more controlling role for teachers (Kohn, 1996). Dreikurs stresses four

basic goals for student misbehavior; to gain attention, to exert power, to exact revenge,

or to gain sympathy by feigning incompetence. Teachers are instructed to build positive

relationships in the classroom and to respond to student misbehavior based on one of

these four potential causes. Dreikurs believed that students would willingly abandon

their inappropriate goals when confronted with them. If they did not, he advised against

expiatory punishments, recommending instead what he called natural or logical con-

sequences. However, in Dreikur’s own writing and in the application his principles

received in schools, natural and logical consequences are often thinly disguised punish-

ments (Kohn, 1996). For example, a child who tips his chair is made to stand throughout

a lesson, and a child who forgets lunch money is made to go without lunch (Dreikurs &

Grey, 1968).

There is much about these approaches to appeal to developmentalists—the focus

on understanding student needs, the respect for student rationality, the idea that stu-

dents have within them the power to solve their own problems, and for some the idea

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 161

of controlling behavior using natural or logical consequences. But these approaches lack

a developmental perspective—a sense of what the developmental tasks are for children

of different ages and the appropriate role of adults in assisting the child’s development.

Some ideas from these programs have been inﬂuential in shaping current developmental

approaches to classroom management, for example helping the child understand the

causes of his or her misbehavior and problem-solving class meetings (DeVries & Zan,

1994; Kohn, 1996; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989; Watson & Ecken, 2003). However,

the approaches described above often become punitive, especially when dealing with

troubled children from stressful environments (Kohn, 1996). Finally, they place little

emphasis on the moral development of students.

EDUCATION FOR MORAL AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

In the 1980s there was a resurgence of interest in the school’s role in moral or character

education. In response to a Gallup poll, 84% of respondents who had children in public

schools favored moral instruction and the United States Secretary of Education called for

teachers to help students become good people as well as good students (Ryan, 1986).

The traditional approach to teaching values easily ﬁt with the then predominant direct

instruction approach to academic learning and controlling approaches to classroom

management (Ryan, 1989). Whether transmitting values or math skills, the educational

processes of telling, modeling, practice, and correction would be the same. Likewise,

whether motivating learning or good behavior the principles of reward and punishment

would apply. Adding character education to the goals of schooling did not require a

rethinking of the whole educational endeavor.

Moral educators working in cognitive-developmental or social constructivist para-

digms faced many more barriers to implementing their programs in public schools.

From the perspective of these educators the mainstream views, 1) of education as the

transmission of knowledge, 2) of learning as passive acceptance, and 3) of classroom

management and discipline as behavioral control, were wholly unacceptable. Drawing

from the work of Piaget (1932/1965), cognitive developmentalists argued that auto-

nomy not obedience and understanding not remembering are the proper aims of educa-

tion (Copple, Sigel, & Saunders, 1979; DeVries & Zan, 1994; Kamii, 1984; Kohlberg &

Meyer, 1972). Also, constructivist educators’ view of children as naturally predisposed

toward cooperation and learning was directly contrary to the negative view of children

as self-interested and work avoidant that predominated in American public education.

Moral or character educators applying developmental, constructivist principles needed

to create alternative approaches to teaching, classroom management, and discipline and

seek alternative venues to hone their approaches.

Kohlberg and his colleagues focused on small, experimental high schools which they

organized into “just communities” (Power et al., 1989). Others, for example, Rheta

DeVries (DeVries & Zan, 1994), Constance Kamii (1984), and Irving Siegel (Copple et al.,

1979), focused on preschool, where the existing views were more compatible. However,

the Child Development Project (Brown & Solomon, 1983; Solomon, Battistitch, Watson,

Schaps, & Lewis, 2000) focused at the elementary level with the goal of working with

existing teachers and administrators to craft ways to integrate a moral focus into all

aspects of school learning.

162 s M. Watson

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEVELOPMENTAL DISCIPLINE

During the 1960s and 1970s, social and motivational psychologists working from a

variety of theoretical perspectives created a substantial body of research related to

children’s moral or prosocial development (e.g., Baumrind, 1967; Hoffman, 1975;

Kohlberg & Mayer, 1972; Peck & Havighurst, 1960; Pitkanen-Pulkkinen, 1980; Sroufe,

1983; Staub, 1971, 1975; Stayton, Hogan, & Ainsworth, 1971; Zahn-Waxler & Radke-

Yarrow, 1979). (See Solomon, Watson, & Battistich 2001 for a review of this research.)

This research along with constructivist developmental theory led developmentally

oriented educators to create new approaches to classroom management and discip-

line. All of these approaches have similar assumptions and goals and all stress the

necessity of creating a caring or just community as a ﬁrst principle. (See Watson &

Battistich, 2006 for a detailed description of these community approaches to class-

room management.)

For example, once the staff of the Child Development Project realized how extensively

children’s behavior in their elementary schools was controlled by rewards and punish-

ments, they began designing an alternative approach to classroom discipline. They

argued this approach would need to fulﬁll four conditions (Watson, Solomon, Battistich,

Schaps, and Solomon, 1989).

1. The teacher–child relationships would need to be warm, supportive, and

mutually trusting.

2. The classroom would need to be a caring, democratic community in which

each child’s needs for competence, autonomy, and belonging are met.

3. Children would need opportunities to discus and reﬁne their understanding of

moral values and how they apply to everyday life in the classroom.

4. To help children act in accordance with prosocial values, teachers would need

to use both proactive and reactive control techniques that enhance (or at least

do not undermine) the above goals.

What Does It Mean To Be Prosocial Or Morally Competent?

To act morally one must act for moral reasons, e.g., to help another or live up to a moral

value. Acting to avoid punishment, gain pleasure, emulate a powerful model, or please

authority is not moral action. Therefore, a morally supportive management and dis-

cipline system must foster students’ empathic caring and moral awareness, while mini-

mizing or avoiding the enticement of desirable behavior through praise, rewards, and

punishments.

Moral competency also requires that one knows how to carry out the actions that

are called for by one’s moral values, and have the stamina to act morally in the face

of obstacles. Thus, a management and discipline system focused on supporting moral

growth will need to focus on teaching the social and emotional competencies required

for moral action and help students build moral stamina (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2005). (See

Narvaez, 2006 for a description and discussion of a wide range of competencies involved

in competent moral action.) Let us turn now to the four necessary components of a

developmental approach to classroom management and discipline supportive of moral

development.

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 163

Warm, Nurturing, and Trusting Teacher–Child Relationships

Arguing for warm, nurturing, trusting teacher–child relationships may seem like

arguing for tasty, nutritious school lunches. Who could argue otherwise? However, if

one views children as essentially self-interested, a view that undergirds most control

oriented management and discipline systems, it would be difﬁcult to feel warm, nur-

turing, or trusting when children do not behave as we wish. One might feel warm,

nurturing, and trusting toward some children, those who behave well, but not toward

children who regularly misbehave. As the following comment from a high school

student indicates, many classrooms lack warm, nurturing, trusting teacher–child rela-

tionships (Watson, 2006).

Tara: It’s like nobody’s really pushing us to do our best. If you don’t understand . . .

they’ll think that you’re not understanding on purpose.

Teaching techniques for controlling students is considerably easier than teaching how

to build nurturing, trusting relationships. For many teachers, it requires changing their

understanding of children, an understanding they have acquired over years of hearing

about rewards, reinforcements, and self-interest. However, both developmental theory

and research on family socialization practices compel us to undertake this task.

A substantial body of research supports the view that children’s moral development

is positively related to warm, nurturing, and autonomy supportive parenting styles.

Morally mature children were more likely to have been raised in families where their

parents were sensitive to their needs and emotionally involved as opposed to distant.

These parents trusted their children, involved them in decision making, and allowed

reasonable freedom and responsibility (Solomon et al., 2001). If one assumes that the

teacher’s role as an agent for moral growth should be similar to the parent’s role, the

research clearly points to the importance of teachers building warm, nurturing, and

trusting relationships with students.

The centrality of such relationships to moral development is not only supported

by empirical studies. It is consistent with several powerful theoretical perspectives on

children’s development. For example, care theorists Gilligan (1982), Kerr (1996), and

Noddings (2002) argue that a commitment to care is central to morality and that chil-

dren learn to become caring by being in caring relationships. Attachment theorists

argue that when children are reared in an environment in which their caretakers are

available and respond sensitively to their needs, “a disposition for obedience—and

indeed a disposition to become socialized—tends to develop” (Stayton et al., 1971,

p. 1059). This view of children as developing a cooperative stance to the world based

on their cooperative interactions with their caregivers is also consistent with Vygot-

sky’s view of the child as an apprentice to the adult and Piaget’s view of the role of

parent–child cooperation in socialization. For example, in The Moral Judgment of the

Child (1932/1965) Piaget says:

There is a spontaneous mutual affection [between parents and children], which

from the ﬁrst prompts the child to acts of generosity, and even of self-sacriﬁce, to

very touching demonstrations which are in no way prescribed. And here no doubt is

the starting point for that morality of good . . .

(p. 195)

164 s M. Watson

From the perspective of Developmental Discipline it is the experience of warm, nurtur-

ing, trusting caregiver–child relationships that gives rise to a core aspect of morality, the

desire to be caring and cooperative. For many children this desire will already have been

kindled in their family. But still, if the classroom is not a caring place, if, for example,

students need to compete with each other to obtain teacher attention and favor, then, at

the very least, they may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to behave in caring ways in the classroom.

Worse, they may come to think that treating others fairly and kindly applies only at

home. They may come to believe that it is justiﬁed to shun or tease the students who

are less able or who are frequently “disciplined.” Even for initially caring or cooperative

students an uncaring classroom is unlikely to further and may even hinder moral

development.

However, some students arrive at school never having experienced the kind of sens-

itive, nurturing relationships that allowed them to view others as caring, themselves as

worthy of care, and relationships as cooperative (Sroufe, 1988, 1996). These are also the

students most likely to cause difﬁculties in the classroom. Depending on the nature of

their earlier experiences, they are likely to have poor social skills, lower impulse control,

and greater dependency needs, or to be particularly aggressive and deﬁant (Cohn, 1990;

Howes & Hamilton, 1992; Pianta, Nimetz, & Bennett, 1997; Sroufe, 1983, 1988, 1996;

Sroufe & Fleeson, 1986). These children will be mistrustful of their teachers and if teach-

ers view them as capable but self-interested, it will be difﬁcult to like them, let alone form

warm, trusting relationships. But without such a relationship these students will not

have a basis for building a moral world view—a view of relationships as cooperative and

reciprocal.

What’s Involved in Forming Caring Teacher–Child Relationships? A caring relationship

requires not only that the caregiver be reasonably successful in meeting the legitimate

needs of the one cared for, but also that the one cared for perceive the caring intent

(Noddings, 2002). With Developmental Discipline teachers are helped to view students

as wanting to learn and wanting to have mutually caring relationships, but often needing

help in doing so. This will be easier if teachers begin the year with a focus on getting to

know each student personally and, because many students will be mistrustful of their

teachers, on conveying to each student that they like and care about them. Instead of a

focus on being in control or “not smiling ’til Christmas,” teachers are advised to do nice

things for students, seriously engage their issues and concerns, share their own experi-

ences and stories, and bring fun and humor into the classroom.

Building a Caring, Just, Democratic Learning Community

In addition to a trusting teacher–child relationship, a classroom that supports students’

moral development must meet other student needs. Studies of human motivation

demonstrate that to ﬂourish children need to experience not only a sense of belonging—

that they are loved—but also a sense of competence—that they are capable and seen as

capable by others—and a sense of autonomy—that their actions are consistent with what

they want or believe they should do (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Nicholls, 1989; White, 1959).

In cognitive developmental theory, the ideal adult–child relationship supportive of

moral growth “is characterized by mutual respect and cooperation” in an environment

where children have the possibility to interact with one another and to regulate their

behavior voluntarily (DeVries, Zan, Hildebrandt, Edmiasto, & Sales, 2002, p. 17). Dewey

(1916/1966) and Kohlberg and his colleagues (Power et al., 1989) stress the power of

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 165

participation in a democratic or just community for fostering moral development and

a commitment to democratic ideals. In social-constructivist theory, children are viewed

as biologically predisposed to seek cooperative relationships with more accomplished

others (adults) around meaningful tasks within their community (Vygotsky, 1968).

Through these collaborative interactions “the child acquires the ‘plane of consciousness’

of the natal society and is socialized, acculturated, made human” (Tharp & Gallimore,

1988, p. 30).

Thus, a constructivist developmental approach to classroom management and dis-

cipline needs to involve students in actually creating and maintaining their learning

community. They will need ways to inﬂuence decisions that affect the community and

opportunities to take responsibility for the community. Teachers will need to provide

for student choice and explanations for externally imposed rules or requirements. They

will need to help students develop the skills of friendship and self-regulation. Thus,

Developmental Discipline involves some form of collaborative learning—opportunities

for students to learn and work together in fair and caring ways under the guidance of

the teacher. It also involves explicit teaching of strategies to resolve conﬂicts fairly, class

meetings for inﬂuencing community decisions and life, and class jobs or responsibilities.

Teachers are also advised to limit competition, focusing instead on each student’s accom-

plishments while encouraging students to help one another.

Providing Opportunities to Discuss and Think about Moral Values

Developmental theory and research (Berkowitz, Gibbs, & Broughton, 1980; Blatt &

Kohlberg, 1975; Nucci, 2001; Oser, 1986) and studies of the family practices of morally

mature children (Peck & Havighurst, 1960; Pitkanen-Pulkkinen, 1980; Walker & Taylor,

1991) indicate a positive inﬂuence on children’s moral development of moral discourse.

Care theory also stresses the importance of morally relevant conversations to students’

positive development (Noddings, 2005). Such conversations can happen as part of the

study of literature and history, in response to individual student actions or questions,

and in class meetings to make decisions or reﬂect on class experiences. For example, in

the CDP program such conversations often occur at the beginning and end of collabora-

tive learning activities as students are asked to reﬂect on and discuss ways to treat one

another fairly and kindly and their level of success at doing so (Developmental Studies

Center, 1997; Watson, Solomon, Dasho, Shwartz, & Kendzior, 1994).

Ways We Want Our Class to Be. Instead of speciﬁc lists of do’s and don’ts such as “Keep

your hands and feet to yourself ” or “Listen when the teacher is talking,” most develop-

mental approaches to discipline and classroom management engage students in deciding

rules based in moral principles. Learning to Trust (Watson & Ecken, 2003) at the elemen-

tary level and Moral Classrooms/Moral Children (DeVries & Zan, 1994) at the preschool

level describe different but related processes for devising class rules through discussion,

careful questioning, and guiding by the teacher. In the Just Community (Power et al.,

1989) high school students have opportunities for moral discussion in small student

advisories and discuss and make all the rules for the school in whole school meetings

along with faculty. Teachers can inﬂuence the decisions through the power of moral per-

suasion, but not the power of authority.

Even very young children understand the moral principle of reciprocity and possess

such basic moral knowledge as it’s wrong to hurt another without reason or to treat

people unfairly (Nucci & Turiel, 1978). Thus, they will describe a moral classroom when

166 s M. Watson

invited to seriously reﬂect on how they want their class to be. When children are helped

to devise general rules and procedures in these ways, moral concepts such as kindness,

fairness, and respect are partly deﬁned by the speciﬁc examples and become class guide-

lines replacing the more traditional lists of speciﬁc required behaviors. It becomes clearer

to students that when teachers ﬁnd it necessary to enforce rules, they are exercising moral

authority not just the authority of their position.

Control Techniques—Structure, Guidance, and Responses to Misbehavior

In any classroom, sheer numbers of children as well as their levels of immaturity make it

necessary for teachers to exert control. While Developmental Discipline is not primarily

about control, how teachers achieve control is important and can be a powerful force

for moral development. How students respond to their teachers’ efforts at control will

depend in large part on the quality of the teacher–student relationship—hence Devel-

opmental Discipline’s initial focus on relationship building. When students view the

teacher as responsive to their needs, they are more likely to respond to control efforts in a

cooperative spirit. Teachers and students will be able to achieve what Piaget (1932/1965)

and others have called a cooperative approach to discipline—an approach that will lead

to an autonomous morality (DeVries et.al., 2002; Kamii, 1984). Conversely, how and

how much teachers exercise control will affect the student–teacher relationship. In the

sections that follow, the principle control techniques consistent with Developmental

Discipline are described and discussed.

Indirect Control. Shaping the environment to interfere with potential misbehavior or

facilitate desirable behavior can make classroom life easier for everyone. How teachers

design the environment will depend on their learning goals and the behaviors they want

to facilitate or prevent. For example, seating students in rows makes it harder for them

to talk and observe one another’s work, while seating students in table groups encour-

ages conversation and work sharing. Assigning partners for group work helps to assure

that all students have opportunities to work with and build friendly relationships with

one another, while allowing students to choose work partners honors autonomy. Teach-

ers may make these decisions themselves, for example, to help students easily sit in a

circle for class meetings a kindergarten teacher might place a circle of tape on the ﬂoor

or arrange seating such that more distractible students are in areas with fewer distrac-

tions. Alternatively, teachers might engage the students in drawing up a set of guidelines

that will help the classroom run more smoothly. For example, a second grade teacher

might use a series of class meetings to devise and assess the effectiveness of guidelines for

leaving the classroom to use the restroom.

Involving students in determining the guidelines and structures that, once established,

will exert control is ideal from a developmental perspective. When students are involved in

creating structures that facilitate the smooth functioning of the classroom their autonomy

is honored and they are helped to understand why the rules and structures are necessary.

In Moral Classroom/Moral Children, DeVries and Zan (1994), provide several examples

of ways to involve students in decisions about nearly all the rules or procedures in pre-

school classrooms. For example, if a teacher wants to begin the year with a rule limiting the

number of students in the block areas, the teacher can alert the students to the problem she

is anticipating by asking the students if the whole class can ﬁt in the block center at the same

time. Then he or she can guide the students in answering the question, “What guidelines do

we need so everyone can have a fair turn with blocks?” (p. 129).

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 167

However, for efﬁciency teachers will often need to take full control in some areas

in order to make room for autonomous learning in others. While acknowledging that

taking full control, even indirect control, robs students of both autonomy and opportun-

ities to learn, the judicious use of teacher determined structures, rules, and procedures

designed to lessen problems and facilitate the teacher’s goals and objectives is fully con-

sistent with Developmental Discipline. Fortunately, elementary school children are quite

willing to grant teachers the power to regulate a fair number of school and classroom

procedures (Nucci, 2001). It is important, however, that teachers offer explanations for

the structures if they are questioned, be willing to change them if students present good

reasons for so doing, and organize their classrooms to assure that students have mean-

ingful opportunities to act autonomously and solve non-trivial problems on their own.

Hopefully the following examples of teachers’ choices in situations in which indi-

rect control might or might not be used illustrate the range of possibilities consistent

with a developmental approach to discipline. In the ﬁrst example, a teacher in an inner-

city second–third grade class carefully chooses the children who sit at each of the ﬁve

tables, changing table groups every month. For academic tasks involving partners, this

teacher assigns partners either randomly or based on her judgment of optimal pairings

for the given activity. When students groan about not being able to work with their

preferred friends or try to trade partners, the teacher acknowledges that they might be

disappointed not to get to work with their best friends, but that her goal for the class is

for them to learn to work with everybody and to see that everybody in the class is worth

getting to know. To facilitate tenuous partnerships, she teaches the students how to greet

a partner in a friendly way even if they are disappointed, and works hard to facilitate

successful interactions of partnerships when the initial interactions seemed tentative or

unfriendly.

Because this is a situation where the students really did mind not having the auto-

nomy to make their own choices, the teacher needed to work hard at establishing this

ground rule and used a good deal of humor before the students accepted the teacher’s

control. The following vignette illustrates one of the humorous ways this teacher made

her exercise of control more palatable.

With some students, if they don’t get exactly who they want to work with, they’ll say,

“I’m not working with them!” So what I’ve been doing when I introduce a partner

activity is to say, “Now, we’re going to work with partners in this activity, and I don’t

care if you get Captain Hook for a partner, If you get Captain Hook, I want you to

say, ‘I’m glad to be hooked up with you, let’s get to work.’ ” And then I’ll go on and

say some other goofy stuff. “If you get a boa constrictor for a partner, say, ‘Give me a

hug, and let’s go to work.’ ”

Well, this week we were going to get new partners for working with the book

Chicken Sunday. Just as I got ready to name the partners, Rebecca announced, “And

remember, Mrs. Ecken, if you get a tiger, say you’re glad to be with that tiger and

just work with him.” And then three or four others piped up with different animals.

(Watson & Ecken, 2003, p. 65)

There is no guarantee that this choice was the right choice for this class. The teacher

was guided by her goals—helping her students respect and get along with everyone in

the class, creating a caring community, and encouraging respect for individual

168 s M. Watson

differences—and her ongoing observations of her students. As the vignette shows, the

students did stop resisting and appeared to accept the validity of the teacher’s goals.

Further conﬁrmation of the teacher’s choice came several years later when these stu-

dents were interviewed in high school. One student attributed his current ability to

work with others to his experiences in the class and several others spontaneously

recalled their good feelings toward all their classmates.

John: . . . Today I can work with almost anybody. I think it helped me in my life by

working with other people in groups.

Tara: . . . Everybody knew everybody. . . . Everybody was like in one big group because

everybody knew each other.

In the second class, a suburban ﬁfth–sixth grade class, the teacher allowed the students

to choose with whom they sit and work during collaborative activities. No problems

seemed to emerge until January when the class had a meeting to assess how they were

doing at creating the kind of classroom they said they wanted—a classroom deﬁned by

friendship, kindness, and respect. Midway through the meeting, students began to talk

about having their feelings hurt, being teased, and of not being able to trust some of the

other students in the class. One student offered the explanation that some of the stu-

dents don’t really know one another that well. Another suggested that the teacher

should change seating more often and another threw out a suggestion to the class,

saying “Hey, you guys, I’ve got a suggestion. How about when Mrs. Lewis lets us change

our seats, instead of choosing our special friends, we choose someone we don’t know

that well.” The class agreed and the students had solved the problem autonomously.

The heavier as well as the lighter use of control are consistent with Developmental

Discipline. Teachers need to make judgments about how much control to exercise based

on what they believe about their students’ capabilities, the risks and or time involved in

not exercising control, and their own particular learning goals. Cognitive developmental

and motivation theory and research both point to the importance of autonomy and

would seem to imply that less adult control is better. However, as Erikson (1950/1963)

argues, it is the adult’s role to provide children with “gradual and well-guided experience

of the autonomy of free choice” (p. 252). Higher levels of parental control are corre-

lated with moral maturity if that control is seen by children as having been in their best

interests (Pitkanen-Pulkkinen, 1980) or necessary for safety (Baldwin, Baldwin, & Cole,

1990).

Proactive Control. Proactive control is akin to scaffolding in academics. As students are

about to engage in an activity that will place high demands on their social, emotional, or

moral skills, the teacher seeks to prime those skills by, for example, reminding students

of the skills that will be needed or asking the students to think in advance how they will

solve some of the problems likely to arise. CDP’s approach to cooperative learning pro-

vides a good example of proactive control (Developmental Studies Center, 1997; Watson

et al., 1994). Before students set out to work on a collaborative project the teacher either

reminds them of the interpersonal problems they might encounter or asks the students

to think of potential problems and solutions. If needed, relevant social or moral compe-

tencies can be taught before the students begin work.

Alerting students to potential social/moral issues likely to be involved in a given activ-

ity and teaching relevant skills is a powerful form of instruction in the social/moral

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 169

domain. Students have immediate opportunities to practice the skills in the context of

authentic learning activities. Such scaffolding can provide students with social/moral

success experiences that not only sharpen their skills but also help them see themselves

as good people and their classroom as a caring community.

As with indirect control, how much is open to the students to ﬁgure out on their own

will depend on the teacher’s estimate of how much help the students will need to be

reasonably successful. One can engage in too much proactive control as well as too little.

Too much wastes time, deprives students of the challenge of ﬁguring problems out for

themselves, and can imply that the teacher lacks trust in the students’ abilities. Too little

can cause students to experience unnecessary pain and frustration, undermine class-

room relationships, limit learning, and lead students to feel guilty or inept. The goal is

not to eliminate all problems, should that even be possible, but to provide enough help

to assure that students achieve reasonable success and do not ﬂounder unproductively.

Rewards and Praise. Rewards and praise are frequently used by teachers as a form of

proactive control. It’s a basic principle of behavioral theory that organisms tend to repeat

behaviors that are followed by positive outcomes. One way for teachers to prevent misbe-

havior is to reward or praise behaviors that are inconsistent with the undesirable behav-

iors they want to eliminate. This sounds like a great form of control, good behaviors

are reinforced, misbehaviors are reduced, and nice things happen to students. Numer-

ous character education and management approaches have been developed around the

“catch them being good” concept.

While developmental educators disagree on whether rewards and praise have any place

in a developmental, constructivist approach to classroom management and discipline,

there is general agreement that using praise and rewards proactively to encourage good

behavior will undermine a teacher’s effectiveness as a moral educator. Enticing students

to behave in desired ways by the promise of rewards deprives students of the opportunity

to act for their own reasons. Because autonomy is a basic human need, manipulative

rewards designed to control behavior risk undermining the teacher–student relationship

and lessening the desire to perform the rewarded behavior for intrinsic reasons (Kohn,

1993; Lepper & Greene, 1978).

Equally important from the perspective of moral education, such praise deprives stu-

dents of the opportunity to behave in positive ways because they understand that those

ways are more considerate or fair. Moral actions must be done for moral reasons. Prom-

ising rewards undermines autonomy and prevents students from acting for moral or

prosocial reasons.

Some developmental educators argue that rewards and praise, even praise that is

meant to show appreciation or approval of a student’s behavior, have no place in moral

education. For example, Kohn (1993, 2005) and DeVries and Zan (1994) both argue

that praise is counterproductive because it substitutes an authority’s judgment for the

student’s own. Kohn argues that “what’s most striking about a positive judgment is that

it’s a judgment (2005, p. 155). Similarly, DeVries and Zan (1994) state that when a child

does something positive, “the constructivist teacher does not praise the behavior” (p. 32).

In the place of praise Kohn (2005) suggests various forms of encouragement such as

describing the student’s action, pointing out the positive effects of the action on others,

and asking the student to reﬂect on or tell about his or her action or accomplishment.

Other developmentally oriented educators view non-manipulative praise to be con-

sistent with developmental theory (Nucci, 2003; Watson & Ecken, 2003). Praise that is

170 s M. Watson

meant to validate, inform, or celebrate a child’s accomplishment is consistent with a

sociocultural view of development in that it can serve to provide children with know-

ledge of their culture and provide a bonding experience of shared joy.

Desists—Responding to Misbehavior. From a developmental perspective, children nat-

urally want to understand their world and form mutually caring relationships but are

still developing the competencies needed to succeed. From this perspective, student mis-

behaviors are mistakes and mistakes are opportunities for learning. In an appropriate

learning environment mistakes indicate the zone of proximal development or ZPD—the

area where adult guidance is most likely to help the child advance to a higher plane. It

follows from social constructivist theory that teachers’ responses to misbehaviors can

powerfully affect moral learning.

Research in family socialization also supports the potential for disciplinary responses

in moral learning and development (Solomon et al., 2001). Hoffman (2000) offers two

reasons why parental disciplinary actions are important for children’s moral develop-

ment: such encounters are frequent, at least for children between two and ten, and they

provide parents with highly salient opportunities to teach the misbehaving child how to

respond morally in a moral encounter.

In the classroom, teachers can play a similar socialization role. If teachers view discip-

line desists as primarily about teaching or scaffolding, their responses to student misbe-

havior can support moral development as well as create order and prevent harm. Good

discipline from a developmental perspective involves believing that students want to

learn and behave well, understanding the causes of students’ failure, providing support

based on the presumed causes, and focusing on building student understanding as well

as skills. These aspects of good developmental teaching along with the meaning of what

it is to be moral have clear implications for how teachers should respond to student

misbehavior. The following guidelines for disciplinary interventions follow from or are

consistent with developmental theory:

s "ECAUSE THERE ARE MANY POSSIBLE CAUSES FOR MISBEHAVIOR choose desists that

address the most likely cause of the misbehavior, for example, a reminder for

momentary inattention; instruction or scaffolding for lack of social/emotional

skills; discussion or empathy induction for inconsiderate behavior.

s "ECAUSE CHILDREN GENERALLY WANT TO LEARN AND DO WHAT IS RIGHT attribute to the

student(s) the best possible motive consistent with the facts.

s "ECAUSEAUTONOMYISABASICHUMANNEEDANDMORALACTIONMUSTBEFROMINTERNAL

motives, minimize the use of power assertion and maximize the autonomy of

the misbehaving student(s).

s "ECAUSEGOODTEACHINGREQUIRESACARINGCOOPERATIVERELATIONSHIPminimize neg-

ative consequences to the misbehaving student(s) while focusing on solving the

problems creating or created by the misbehavior.

s "ECAUSE GOOD TEACHING AIMS AT FOSTERING UNDERSTANDING focus on the harmful

effects of the misbehavior and engage students in deﬁning the problem and

ﬁnding a solution.

s "ECAUSECHILDRENAREDEVELOPINGANDDEPENDONTHEHELPOFhMOREACCOMPLISHED

others,” accept the moral authority and responsibility to insure that students

are caring, respectful, and fair.

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 171

Potential Causes of Misbehavior. Sometimes students misbehave because of momentary

lapses in self-control, inattention to the needs of others, or forgetting established rules

or procedures. If no serious harm has resulted, simply calling the student’s attention to

what he or she is doing in a tone that implies the student knows better is frequently all

that is needed. There is no instruction: the teacher is simply reminding the student to

be guided by his or her better self. Such “call outs” are part of just about all discipline

systems. The important difference in Developmental Discipline is that these reminders

carry no implied negative judgment or threat of impending consequence. In fact, the

implied message is one of trust, “I know you wouldn’t be doing that if you were think-

ing about what you are doing.” These desists can be quite frequent with some students,

particularly in the beginning of the year as relationships and procedures are being

established. However, if they continue to be frequent, they may point to a different

cause, for example, the demands of the environment may be too high or the student

may have a high need for attention.

Sometimes teachers themselves are the cause of student misbehavior (Kohn, 1996).

Lessons or class meetings which run longer than the students’ ability to attend, academic

assignments that are boring or too difﬁcult, competitive classroom structures that pit

students against one another, and insufﬁcient support or scaffolding for new or chal-

lenging activities will inevitably result in student “misbehavior.” In these instances, the

corrections need to be taken by the teacher. When teachers are faced with misbehavior

by a large number of students, Developmental Discipline suggests teachers analyze their

own behavior for the potential cause. When teachers surmise that they are the cause, they

can acknowledge the problem, explain what they believe has been causing the problem,

seek student input and advice, and make adjustments in order to create a better learning

environment.

Sometimes student misbehavior is caused by their lack of acceptance of school or class-

room rules or procedures. For example, some schools or teachers disallow hats, running

in the halls, or going up the slide, some have strict dress codes and some have neatness

or modesty requirements. Students do not view these as moral issues and, especially

by early adolescence, may ﬁnd such regulations unreasonable or personally intrusive

(Nucci, 2001). Usually teachers need to enforce such rules, whether they agree with them

or not. They can offer reasons for such rules, but students may not accept the reasons. If

the teacher–student relationship is positive, and the number of such rules small, students

will usually comply.

If students persist in violating a non-moral rule, the teacher may have to use power to

force compliance, but not until he or she has tried to cajole the student into cooperating

or talked with the student to ﬁnd a way for the student to live with the rule. The teacher–

student relationship is central to enforcing these rules and a sympathetic, light touch in

enforcing them will help build student–teacher relationships.

Even in a well orchestrated classroom environment with engaging and appropriate

learning activities and few rules that students ﬁnd unreasonable, students will mis-

behave. Potential causes for misbehavior abound: failure to understand the teacher’s

directions or expectations, relative lack of self-control or interpersonal skills; relaxed

effort; inability to do the academic work; belief by some students that they have to ﬁght

for what they need; strong self-interest conﬂicting with that of others; an interpersonal

style that is rude or aggressive. In any given incident, if a simple request, reminder, or

support does not stop the behavior, the teacher’s next response needs to be guided by

172 s M. Watson

the presumed cause of the misbehavior—explain directions or rules; teach self-control

or interpersonal skills; encourage increased effort; provide extra academic help; deny

the applicability of their competitive, aggressive world view; help them see the need to

balance their self-interest with the needs of others; help them see the problems caused by

their poor behavior; and teach more respectful forms of interaction. A complicated set

of possibilities, especially given that few misbehaviors come with a sign identifying their

cause.

Time is also an important issue in the classroom. Sometimes there is not time in

the moment to follow a simple desist with explanation or instruction. Later, it might

be important to provide explanation or talk with students to hear their view or simply

reconnect. Sometimes, however, the misbehavior does not stop. At such times, Develop-

mental Discipline advocates that teachers stop the misbehavior while conveying respect,

minimizing pain, and allowing as much autonomy as possible. The focus is on solving

the problem, not on punishing the student. For example, a student who continues to dis-

tract his tablemates during reading may be sent to a quiet part of the room to continue

reading.

Even disciplinary encounters around non-moral matters—paying attention, walking

in the halls—convey moral information. When teachers treat all students with respect,

even when they are misbehaving and even those who usually misbehave, they are living

and modeling important moral principles of care and respect. When teachers respect the

needs and dignity of misbehaving students, they convey the message that moral obliga-

tion extends to all. Their behavior says that it is not alright to harm or treat someone

badly even if they are behaving badly. They are providing to misbehaving students the

consideration, care, and respect they are asking from them. This will not only increase

student trust and respect for the teacher, it will increase respect for other students, even

those who misbehave. In a climate of mutual respect it will be easier for students to

treat one another kindly, fairly, and with respect. At the very least, students will get more

practice in being kind and respectful and feel less justiﬁed in scapegoating those students

who, for whatever reason, more frequently misbehave.

When misbehaviors pose the possibility of or cause harm they offer powerful oppor-

tunities for moral learning. Student–student conﬂict along with behaviors like teasing,

excluding, and threatening harm provide teachers with the opportunity to develop many

skills involved in moral understanding and behavior. And because the other students are

watching, those who have not caused harm are absorbing some of that learning.

The Problem with Punishment. From a developmental perspective, punishment used

as an inducement to moral growth is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive.

A punished person may avoid the punished behavior in order to avoid future punish-

ment, but avoiding personal harm is not a moral reason. Thus, the better behavior does

not amount to moral growth. Punishment can also cause the punished to focus on the

harm done to him or her, lead to resentment of the punisher, and take the focus off of

the harm the child caused (Hoffman, 2000). For most children, who generally want to

be good but lack the needed skills or understanding, punishment is unnecessary. For

oppositional children, those who have little trust and a confrontational stance toward the

world, it will likely reinforce their untrusting, deﬁant stance (Hall & Hall, 2003).

Recognizing that there are times when children’s behavior does need to be controlled,

many educators have advocated discipline approaches that feature the use of negative

consequences that are logically or naturally related to the misbehavior (e.g., Charney,

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 173

2002; Dreikurs, Grunwald, & Pepper, 1982). Kohn (1996) calls such approaches “punish-

ment lite.” Such consequences may be useful for controlling behaviors that do not cause

harm to others, such as forgetting one’s lunch money, or not ﬁnishing an academic assign-

ment, but letting a child go without lunch or making a student work through recess are

not caring. Logical consequences are not inevitable. They are allowed to happen because

the authority ﬁgure believes they will cause the misbehaving child some discomfort or

harm, and thus teach the child that repeating the behavior will result in more unpleasant

consequences. Imposing consequences does not join with the student in an effort to

solve the problem. Worse, it carries the message that the punisher does not really care for

the child. When a teacher causes one student in the classroom to experience a punitive

albeit logical consequence, that student and all the others who are watching have one

more reason not to trust in the teacher’s caring. Students who already believe that the

world is uncaring will have their mistaken view conﬁrmed.

So what is a developmentally oriented teacher to do when one student or a group

of students misbehaves? While some developmentally oriented educators advocate the

use of natural or logical consequences (DeVries & Zan, 1994; Hall & Hall, 2003; Nucci,

2003); most of their examples of logical consequences are actually actions taken to solve

the problem created by the misbehavior. Such actions might be unpleasant for the child,

but any unpleasantness is the unavoidable consequence of solving the problem. That

is, the adult’s intention is to solve the problem and sometimes the only way to solve the

problem will also cause unpleasantness for the child. For example, Hall and Hall (2003)

describe logical consequences as consequences that “restrict privileges only to the extent

necessary to protect people’s health and safety, to safeguard property, and to ensure the

basic rights of others” (2003, p. 131). In the Just Community the purpose of the Discip-

line Committee

is to bring students who break rules into a conversation so that they can understand

more adequately why their behavior presents a problem for the community and can

feel the support of members of the community who genuinely want them to remain

a part of the group.

(Power et al., 1989, p. 97)

Nucci (personal communication) offers the following example of an ideal logical con-

sequence. A middle school teacher assigned a student who had teased a student with

Down’s syndrome to assist in a special education classroom. The special education

teacher provided support for the student as he worked with the students. Eventually,

the student became an advocate in his school for the handicapped.

From a developmental perspective, for all misbehaviors, the teacher’s goals are to pre-

serve the student–teacher relationship and provide whatever support the student needs

to stop misbehaving. With a conception of students as generally wanting to learn and

wanting to be in mutually caring relationships, the teacher needs to guess at the possible

cause of the misbehavior, take action designed to address the potential cause, and judge

the effectiveness of her actions.

When misbehavior causes harm, more can and must be done to maintain a caring,

moral community. The teacher needs to focus students on the harm they have caused—

a true consequence of their behavior—encourage the students’ empathic response to

the other’s distress, and insist that they ﬁnd a way to repair the harm they caused. As

174 s M. Watson

Oser (2005) argues, truly facing the negative consequences of one’s actions can provide

a powerful force for moral growth. The following example from a second–third grade

classroom illustrates this point.

The teacher, Laura Ecken, had been working hard to build a trusting and support-

ive relationship with Tralin, a student with many positive characteristics but who had a

history of ﬁghting with and teasing classmates. In this incident, the children are getting

ready to leave the cafeteria. Tralin shoves another student, Tyrone, out of line so she

would be able to stand near her friend, Ella. When Tyrone complained, Laura believed

she could simply ﬁx the problem by telling Tralin to give Tyrone back his place in line

and proceeded to move the class out of the cafeteria. Here, in the teacher’s words, is what

happened next.

Before we could get all the way outside, she [Tralin] was screaming at Tyrone, “Your

mom uses crack cocaine! Your mom’s a crackhead!”

I asked her to just step aside so we could talk. I asked her why she had called his

mother that, and she said, “Because she is and he lied on me and said I pushed him

out of the line and I didn’t touch him.”

I said, “You know, Tralin, you’re lying to yourself. I saw you push him out of the

line. You wanted to be with Ella and so you shoved him out of the way.

“You know I’m not going to allow that, and I’m not going to allow you to call his

mother names. Can you imagine how painful it is for Tyrone to know that about

his mother, to suffer all the pain from that, and then to have to be at school and

have you make his pain even worse? That’s just not right.”

I said, “You know, you said some ugly things to Tyrone and I think it’d probably

be best to take care of that.”

She just looked at me, so I said, “When you have a plan, just ﬁnd me and let me

know, but I think that you should take care of it before the day’s over.”

About an hour later Tralin came up to me and kind of stood there, so I asked her

if she had a plan. She said, “I need to tell him that I’m sorry and that I didn’t mean

any of it. I was just mad and that’s why I said it.”

I asked her if she wanted him to come out in the hall so she could tell him that

privately, and she said, “Yeah, but ﬁrst I need a drink.”

I told her, “Listen, you go get a drink and I’ll tell Tyrone you want to talk to him

in the hall.”

When Tyrone came back in, he was happy and so was Tralin.

(Watson & Ecken, 2003, pp. 162–163)

In this example, the best possible motives consistent with the facts are none too good.

Tralin pushed Tyrone out of line because she wanted to be by Ella and when the teacher

did not allow this Tralin was angry and wanted to hurt Tyrone because she blamed him

for her plight. When Tralin denies having pushed Tyrone out of line, the teacher tells

her that she is lying to herself and confronts her with the consequences of her ugly

words to Tyrone. She helps Tralin see Tyrone’s perspective and think about how hard

his life must be. She calls upon fairness, and then tells Tralin that she should try in some

way to repair the harm she has caused. These are real consequences for Tralin, but they

are not designed to inﬂict discomfort on her. They are designed to induce empathy and

moral feelings and provide Tralin with a way to right a moral wrong. The teacher also

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 175

shows respect and conﬁdence in Tralin by letting her ﬁgure out a way to make repara-

tion. This is the kind of moral instruction that has both the power to arouse moral

desire through the student’s empathic response, increase moral sensitivity by helping

Tralin really see what she has done, provide moral knowledge by telling her what a

moral person who has caused harm does, and allows Tralin to repair her moral stand-

ing with Tyrone and the community.

Hoffman (2000) refers to this form of disciplinary response as induction. Induction

takes different forms depending on the situation, but essentially it involves empathy,

moral reasoning, and moral instruction. It can also be accompanied by genuine moral

outrage and power assertion. When students understand that their teacher’s goal is to

help and protect them, they are more open to learning and less likely to resent the teach-

er’s power assertion or the discomfort they may experience in the process. I had the

opportunity to interview Tralin at the end of her sophomore year in high school. When

she said that Laura Ecken’s class was different from her other classes, I asked her to tell

me how it was different. Prominent in her description was the way Laura responded to

student misbehavior.

[In my current classes], You did what you did, you got in trouble . . . next day come

back, act like nothing happened. . . . Just start all over again. And Mrs. Ecken, if we got

in trouble . . . she’ll give us a chance to think about it. . . . How could we change the

situation differently? What could we have done to make it better?

When teachers need to take controlling actions in order to create a caring and produc-

tive learning environment, they try to honor the child’s good will by providing some

autonomy and the message that the student is still part of the community. To help stu-

dents see such disciplinary actions as efforts to solve problems rather than punish-

ments, teachers can either explain these procedures or ideally generate with the students

non-punitive ways teachers can solve problems of student misbehavior (DeVries & Zan,

1994; Nucci, 2003). During calm moments, when their self-interest is not immediately

pulling them toward misbehavior, students know they should work hard and be kind

and fair and they understand the teacher’s responsibility for maintaining order.

THE GOOD ENOUGH TEACHER

A developmental approach to discipline and classroom management is not easy. First,

it’s not easy to like students who don’t work hard, bully other children, defy authority,

or continually clamor for attention. It’s easier when we view such children as vulnerable

and desperately seeking to belong and succeed in a world they perceive as uncaring,

but it is still hard. With such children, teachers will need to call upon their capacity for

“professional caring,” to act as if they liked the students even when they don’t (Noddings,

2002). While forming mutually caring relationships with all students is the goal of teach-

ers using Developmental Discipline, it is good enough to treat all students as if we liked

them when we cannot make ourselves actually like them.

A developmental approach to discipline requires that teachers balance many needs

and goals. It is often difﬁcult to know the best course of action. For example, elementary

teacher Donene Polson describes allowing a student freedom to put little effort into a

poetry unit, knowing that the student would discover the problem when he displayed

176 s M. Watson

his poor work to the class. However, the student’s embarrassment at showing his work

led Donene to plan “to hold conferences more frequently . . . to support students in man-

aging their time and responsibilities” (Polson, 2001, p. 126). While treating all students

with care is the moral obligation of teachers, the good enough teacher will sometimes

make decisions that are not optimal. It is good enough to care enough to reﬂect and

learn from one’s mistakes. Consider the following anecdote from another elementary

classroom.

Yolanda and Martin were hitting each other with the pillows. They do that often

and I’m just constantly reminding them. I know it was a fun thing, but I said to her

“Every single day I need to talk to you both about this. I think that reminding you

isn’t working, so tomorrow I want you to stay in and we’re going to write about why

it’s important that you just put these cushions away and come right back out when

lessons are over.” Yolanda got upset about that: I think she saw it as a punishment.

When she got back to her table group I saw her say something to Tyrone. His

mouth dropped open and he said “She’s gonna get you ﬁred! She’s going to the

ofﬁce as soon as the bell rings and tell ’em you’ve been cussin’ at her. We’re gonna

have a new teacher tomorrow.”

I was upset. So, in front of the kids, I said to Yolanda, “No, now we’re not going

to have threats in the classroom. We’re going to walk to the ofﬁce right now and

talk to them about this.” I added, “Yolanda, have I ever used a cuss word with you

or to you?”

She said “No.”

I said, “Well, you know that and the class knows that, so your plan wouldn’t

work.” I probably could have left it at that, but I was concerned with letting these

kids know that they can’t pull this kind of stuff.

Anyway, after I did all that, I thought later that I was wrong. I asked myself, “Did

you wreck your relationship with this child in one incident?”

So, the next day, when she came in I said, “You know, I made a really big mistake

with you yesterday. I dragged you off to the ofﬁce before I really even sat down and

talked with you. I’m really sorry about that, and it won’t happen again.”

And she said, in a second, “I’m really sorry for what I said.”

I said, “Yolanda, I know you were upset because I asked you not to go out the

next day. I understand that sometimes when we’re upset we say things that we

shouldn’t. And from now on, we’re just going to work through things.” And she just

hugged me.

It is not always possible to do the right thing to best support a student’s moral and aca-

demic development and maintain a caring, productive, learning community. Good

enough teachers genuinely try and when they fail, reﬂect, apologize, and go on trying.

SUMMARY

Moral and character educators have long understood the inﬂuence on moral devel-

opment of the “hidden curriculum” embodied in teachers’ discipline and classroom

management systems. The predominant approaches to classroom management and

discipline in American public schools rely on adult power to control student behavior

Developmental Discipline and Moral Education s 177

through reward and punishment. Developmentally oriented moral educators devised an

alternative approach to school and classroom discipline, Developmental Discipline. It

differs from traditional discipline in its goals, view of children, methods, and its source

of power.

Unlike traditional discipline, Developmental Discipline explicitly aims to foster the

moral and social development of students and rather than rewards and punishments, it

employs explanation; reﬂection; reminders; teaching social, emotional, and moral com-

petencies; empathy induction; and reparation. In Developmental Discipline, the source

of power comes from the trusting and mutually caring relationship between teacher and

children and children’s intrinsic desire to learn and form caring relationships.

With its focus on relationship building, explanation and shared control, a well func-

tioning classroom will take longer to establish using Developmental Discipline. In a

climate of extreme pressure for rapid academic learning, teachers may ﬁnd it difﬁcult to

devote the needed time. Effective moral or character education requires that they do so.

NOTE

1. This term is a variation on a term “good enough parent” used by Bettleheim (1987) in support of less than

perfect parenting.

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180

CONSTRUCTIVIST APPROACHES TO MORAL EDUCATION

IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

Carolyn Hildebrandt and Betty Zan

Constructivist approaches to early childhood education focus on developmentally

appropriate practices for children from birth to eight years of age (Bredekamp & Copple,

1997). The goal of constructivist education is to promote children’s development in all

areas of the curriculum (science, mathematics, language and literacy, social studies, and

the arts) and in all developmental domains (intellectual, physical, social, emotional, and

moral) (DeVries, Zan, Hildebrandt, Edmiaston, & Sales, 2002; Fosnot, 2005).

The term “constructivist,” as it will be used in this chapter, comes from Piaget’s theory

of development. According to Piaget, children construct their knowledge and intelligence

through interactions with their physical and social worlds (Kamii & Ewing, 1996; Piaget,

1970). Constructivist education is deeply rooted in the progressive education movement

and draws inspiration from John Dewey (1909, 1913/1975, 1916, 1938) as well as almost

a century of action research in the classroom (DeVries, 2002; Gofﬁn & Wilson, 2001;

Mayhew & Edwards, 1936; Read, 1966; Tanner, 1997; Weber, 1984).

In their book, Moral Classrooms, Moral Children: Creating a Constructivist Atmosphere

in Early Education, DeVries and Zan (2012) state that the ﬁrst principle of constructiv-

ist education is to create a sociomoral atmosphere where mutual respect is continually

practiced. “Sociomoral atmosphere” refers to the entire network of interpersonal rela-

tions in the classroom—child–child relationships, adult–child relationships, and adult–

adult relationships observable by children.

The main goal of constructivist education is for children to become autonomous, life-

long learners. Autonomous people do not act through blind obedience. Their thoughts

and actions are guided by reason, conviction, and commitment. A major premise of

constructivist education is that children cannot become autonomous intellectually or

morally in authoritarian relationships with adults. According to Piaget (1932/1965):

If he [the child] is intellectually passive, he will not know how to be free ethically.

Conversely, if his ethics consist exclusively in submission to adult authority, and if

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 181

the only exchanges that make up the life of the class are those that bind each student

individually to a master holding all power, he will not know how to be intellectually

active.

(p. 107)

Similarly, Dewey (1938) writes:

[Teaching] is a co-operative enterprise, not a dictation; development occurs through

reciprocal give-and-take, the teacher taking but not being afraid also to give—the

essential point is that the purpose grow and take shape through the process of social

intelligence.

(p. 72)

In constructivist classrooms opportunities for learning about moral issues and behavior

are based, whenever possible, on direct experience. This is consistent with the idea that

children must construct their moral understandings from the raw material of their day-

to-day social interactions (DeVries & Kohlberg, 1987/1990). The classroom is seen as a

community of learners engaged in activity, discourse, interpretation, justiﬁcation, and

reﬂection (Fosnot, 2005). Constructivist teachers facilitate children’s social and moral

development by engaging them in resolving their conﬂicts, making decisions (even

decisions about rules), voting, and discussing social and moral issues that are relevant

to them. As with other areas of the curriculum, constructivist teachers’ aim is to appeal

to children’s interests and purposes, to promote reasoning, and to foster cooperation

between all members of the classroom community.

In this chapter, we begin by providing an overview of the theoretical and historical bases

of constructivist moral education. We then turn to a description of the components of

constructivist moral education with children aged three to eight years. Next, we review

empirical research on the effects of constructivist early education on children’s social and

moral understandings and behavior. Finally we discuss common misconceptions about

constructivist education as well as criticisms of constructivist theory and practice.

THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Throughout the history of constructivist moral education there has been a dynamic

tension between traditional education, where instruction is primarily teacher-centered

and morality is deﬁned by the rules and dictates of authority, and progressive education,

where the classroom is primarily child-centered and moral development is seen as the

gradual construction and application of principles of justice, equity, and compassion. In

this section, we provide an overview of the work of major theorists in the area of con-

structivist moral education and contrast them with traditional educators of their time.

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development

Piaget believed that social life among children is a necessary context for the development

of intelligence, morality, and personality (DeVries, 1997; Piaget, 1948/1973). According

to Piaget, all development emerges from action and reﬂection. Children construct and

reconstruct their knowledge of the world in order to make sense of it, eventually arriving

at more and more adequate forms of reasoning and behavior.

182 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

One of Piaget’s most inﬂuential works in the area of social and moral development

is The Moral Judgment of the Child. Written in 1932, between the two world wars, it is a

landmark work in the area of developmental psychology. Although not aimed directly

at educators, the book provides a strong theoretical basis for current practices in moral

education.

The main question of the book is “How do children’s moral judgments develop?”

Piaget was well aware of the deep social and moral implications of this question, espe-

cially for Western Europe at that time. With the rise of fascism and other totalitarian

forms of government, it was important to determine how children’s moral reasoning

and behavior could be nurtured and developed so that the actions of future genera-

tions could be based on justice and reason rather than on blind submission to dictatorial

rule.

Using naturalistic observations and semi-structured clinical interviews, Piaget studied

children’s understanding of rules governing childhood games, property damage, lying,

stealing, and retributive and distributive justice. He chose these topics because they occur,

in one form or another, in all cultures. Following a stage in which the child is unaware of

the existence of rules, Piaget found a gradual shift from heteronomy (reliance on rules

given by an external authority) to autonomy (understanding that rules can be generated

through a process of mutual consent). In this gradual shift from heteronomy to auto-

nomy, children become increasingly capable of taking other people’s perspectives into

account and making their own judgments about moral issues.

According to Piaget, changes in children’s moral reasoning and behavior are due to

changes in their cognitive structures. Piaget characterized the thinking of young children

as predominantly egocentric. Egocentric thinkers have difﬁculty coordinating their own

views with those of other people. In fact, they may not even realize that other people

have thoughts and feelings that differ from their own. In social situations, egocentrism

sometimes leads young children to project their own thoughts and feelings onto others.

Conversely, it can also lead to a unilateral view of rules and power relations, in which

they accept the rules of others without question.

Egocentrism can also lead to various forms of “moral realism,” such as “objective

responsibility.” Objective responsibility can manifest itself in a number of ways, such as

valuing the letter of the law above the spirit of the law, or focusing on the consequences

of actions rather than the intentions behind them. Moral realism is also associated

with a belief in “imminent justice,” or the expectation that punishments automatically

follow all acts of wrong-doing, either immediately or at some later time. Egocentric chil-

dren often believe that the amount of punishment should correspond to the amount

of damage, regardless of extenuating circumstances or intent. They also have difﬁculty

thinking about the fair distribution of goods and services in terms of equality or equity.

The relative powerlessness of young children, coupled with childhood egocentrism leads

to a heteronomous orientation toward morality. However, through social interactions

with peers and supportive adults, children can construct increasingly autonomous ways

of thinking about rules based on general principles of justice, welfare, and the rights of

others.

Piaget’s ﬁndings provided evidence against French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s

views of moral development and education (Durkheim, 1925/1961). Durkheim,

along with Piaget, believed that morality resulted from social interaction and immer-

sion in a group. However, Durkheim believed that moral development is a natural

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 183

result of an emotional attachment to the group which manifests itself in respect for

the symbols, rules, and authority of the group, along with a “spirit of discipline” that

helps channel and control behavior. In contrast to Durkheim, Piaget demonstrated

that morality was not simply a set of internalized symbols, rules, and norms. He char-

acterized the child’s moral development as a progressive construction of increasingly

more powerful and inclusive ways of thinking about justice, equity, and respect for

persons. He showed that children construct their understanding of morality through

struggles to arrive at fair solutions to everyday problems, particularly in the context

of interactions with peers.

Piaget advocated a progressive approach to moral education involving cooperative

relationships between children and between children and adults. He warned parents and

teachers against the use of coercion and indoctrination as a means of moral education,

stating that it reinforces the young child’s natural tendency toward a heteronomous reli-

ance on external regulation. When adults minimize the exercise of unnecessary author-

ity, it opens up more possibilities for children to construct their own reasons and feelings

of necessity about rules and other social relationships.

Piaget emphasized the importance of children’s social interactions with peers because

social and intellectual equality is often easier to attain in relationships with age-mates

than with adults. In particular, Piaget saw clashes with peers as fruitful because they con-

front children with perspectives other than their own and thus contribute to the over-

coming of egocentrism. Piaget concluded that schools should emphasize cooperative

decision making and problem solving, and nurture moral development by requiring

students to work out common rules based on fairness. Piaget’s focus on cooperation and

mutual respect continues to be an important component of constructivist early moral

education today.

John Dewey’s Philosophy of Moral Education

Constructivist early moral education also draws extensively from the work of American

philosopher and educator, John Dewey. His goal was to educate children so that they

could become productive members of a democratic society (Dewey, 1916). To this end,

children “must be educated for leadership as well as for obedience” and “must have the

power of self-direction and power of directing others, powers of administration, and

ability to assume positions of responsibility” (Dewey, 1909, p. 54).

Dewey emphasized the role of experience, experimentation, purposeful learning, and

freedom in education (Dewey, 1938). He saw education as a scientiﬁc method by which

the individual studies the world, reconstructs knowledge, meanings, and values, and uses

these as data for critical study and intelligent living. He believed that activities in early

childhood should be familiar, direct, and concrete in character—rather than synthetic,

artiﬁcial, and symbolic. Moral education should be fully integrated with other areas of

the curriculum and should deal with real-life issues that are important to children. In

Democracy and Education, he writes,

Moral education is practically hopeless when we set up the development of character

as a supreme end, and at the same time treat the acquiring of knowledge and the

development of understanding, which of necessity occupy the chief part of school

time, as having nothing to do with character.

(Dewey, 1916, p. 411)

184 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

Like Piaget, Dewey warned against the use of coercive methods of instruction. Com-

menting on the enforced quiet and acquiescence demanded by teachers in traditional

classrooms, he writes:

They place a premium upon preserving the outward appearance of attention,

decorum, and obedience. And everyone who is acquainted with schools in which

this system prevailed well knows that thoughts, imaginations, desires, and sly activ-

ities ran their own unchecked course behind this façade.

(Dewey, 1938, p. 62)

According to Dewey (1938), the need for coercion on the part of the traditional teacher

is often because “the school [is] not a community held together by participation in

common activities” (p. 56). He describes traditional education as “an imposition from

above and from outside.”

It imposes adult standards, subject-matter, and methods upon those who are only

growing slowly toward maturity. The gap is so great that the required subject-matter,

the methods of learning and of behaving are foreign to the existing capacities of

the young. They are beyond the reach of the experience the young learners already

possess. Consequently, they must be imposed; even though good teachers will

use devices of art to cover up the imposition so as to relieve it of obviously brutal

features.

(p. 18)

He goes on to write that, “the gulf between the mature or adult products and the

experience and abilities of the young is so wide that the very situation forbids much

active participation by pupils in the development of what is taught” (pp. 18–19).

In Dewey’s Laboratory School at the University of Chicago, moral education per-

meated every aspect of the curriculum and school life (Tanner, 1997). In an issue of the

Elementary School Record devoted to kindergarten, Dewey (1900) wrote that the school’s

primary responsibilities were to teach children to live in cooperative and mutually

helpful ways, to use educational activities and games as “foundational stones of educa-

tional method,” and to reproduce on the children’s level “the typical doings and occupa-

tions of the larger maturer society” of which they will ﬁnally become a part (p. 143). The

Laboratory School was organized as an informal community in which each child felt that

he or she had a share in the work to do. The spirit of the school was one in which teach-

ers were there to help if a child had a problem, with the aim of guiding the child toward

solving his or her own problems in the future. The school sought to develop the kinds

of habits that lead children to accept responsibility, cooperate with others, and engage

in creative and practical work. Dewey believed that every method that fosters the child’s

“capacities in construction, production, and creation marks an opportunity to shift the

center of ethical gravity from an absorption which is selﬁsh to a service that is social”

(1909, p. 26).

Lawrence Kohlberg’s Legacy

Among researchers who studied moral development in the twentieth century, perhaps

none are more well-known than Lawrence Kohlberg. His landmark research on stages of

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 185

moral development has profoundly inﬂuenced all subsequent work in the ﬁeld of moral

education. Kohlberg extended Piaget’s theory by proposing a six-stage sequence of moral

development progressing from heteronomous to increasingly more autonomous reason-

ing and behavior (Kohlberg, 1984). Although Kohlberg’s research focused primarily on

the development of older children (ages ten and above), it continues to have important

implications for early childhood as well.

In addition to his basic research outlining stages of moral reasoning, Kohlberg con-

ducted applied research in the area of moral education, primarily at the high school

level (for a summary, see Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). Kohlberg’s Just Community

approach to moral education draws heavily from the work of both Piaget and Dewey.

Although Kohlberg’s research made use of hypothetical moral dilemmas to draw out

and assess individuals’ stages of moral reasoning, he maintained that children (and

indeed, people of all ages) develop morally through a process of struggling with issues of

justice and fairness that arise out of their everyday life experiences. His Just Community

approach took advantage of spontaneously-arising situations to engage children in rea-

soning about what is right and wrong, fair and unfair.

Kohlberg recognized that within every school is a “hidden curriculum”—a system of

norms and values that regulates behavior and discipline at the school. Kohlberg’s aim

was to transform the hidden curriculum into a curriculum based on justice and fair-

ness. Describing Kohlberg’s approach, Power et al. write that “to learn ‘to understand and

feel justice,’ students have to be both treated justly and called upon to act justly” (1989,

p. 25).

Kohlberg and his colleagues used a small “school-within-a-school” model to create

a sense of belonging among members of the group. Regular community meetings were

conducted in which moral issues related to school life were discussed and democratically

decided, with equal value placed on the voices of both students and teachers. Teachers

played a crucial role in guiding group discussions, creating a delicate balance between

letting students make their own decisions and advocating higher-level reasoning and

behavior. The overall goal was to establish collective norms that were fair to all members

of the community.

Although the Just Community approach was designed primarily for high school stu-

dents, many of the same principles can (and have been) used at the early childhood level

(DeVries & Kohlberg, 1987/1990; DeVries & Zan, 2012). Although some constructivist

early childhood educators might argue with Kohlberg’s characterization of young chil-

dren’s developmental strengths and limitations, few would deny the importance of his

work for constructivist early education.

The Domain Approach

Turiel and his colleagues extended Piaget’s and Kohlberg’s research by distinguishing

three domains or developmental systems of knowledge: moral, social conventional, and

personal (Smetana, in press; Turiel, 1983). Moral issues are those pertaining to justice,

welfare, and the rights of others. Examples of moral issues in a preschool classroom are

physical harm (e.g., hitting, pushing), psychological harm (e.g., teasing, name-calling),

and justice or fairness (e.g., stealing, destroying others’ property, failing to share common

goods). Social conventional rules pertain to uniformities or regularities serving func-

tions of social coordination. In a preschool classroom, examples of social conventions

might be table manners, forms of greeting, or modes of dress. Personal issues pertain to

186 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

actions that do not entail inﬂicting harm or violating fairness or rights, and that are not

regulated formally or informally. Examples of personal issues in a preschool classroom

might be choices of friends, recreational activities, and other activities designated as “free

choice” (Nucci, 1996, 2001, in press). The personal domain, in particular, is important in

forming a sense of moral agency or autonomy. Consistent with the work of Piaget and

Dewey, domain theorists believe that “personal freedom is not in opposition to morality.

A sense of identity and personal agency contributes to the nature of social relationships,

including those of reciprocity and cooperation” (Turiel, 2001, p. xiv).

According to domain theory, moral, conventional, and personal concepts form dis-

tinct systems of knowledge which follow different developmental trajectories. Domain

theory differs from other structural-developmental theories which describe the process

of moral development as entailing the gradual differentiation of principles of justice and

rights from non-moral concerns with conventions, pragmatics, and prudence (Smetana,

in press). Studies in the United States and in other countries show that children, ado-

lescents, and adults judge moral issues to be obligatory, not contingent on authority

dictates, rules, or consensus (e.g., the acts would be wrong even if no rule or law exists

about it), and not contingent on accepted practices within a group or culture (e.g., the

act is wrong even if it were an acceptable practice in another culture). This ﬁnding has

been demonstrated across a wide range of regions and cultures, including North and

South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, as well as in urban/rural, and high/low SES

settings (Smetana, in press; Wainryb, 2006).

During early childhood, moral concepts focus primarily on concrete physical harm

and concerns about welfare. Concepts of psychological harm develop in middle child-

hood along with concepts of fairness as equality and equal treatment. Concepts of fair-

ness as equity develop in early adolescence along with increased ability to coordinate

reasoning within and across domains (for reviews, see Smetana, in press; Turiel, 1998).

Although young children’s thinking about moral issues is more limited than that of

older children, it is not entirely heteronomous (Nucci & Turiel, 1978; Smetana, 1981,

1985). Smetana and colleagues (2012) showed that young children’s understanding

of moral transgressions as wrong independent of authority increased over time. In

responding to hypothetical stories, young children do not generally accept the legiti-

macy of an adult’s directive to engage in acts judged to violate moral precepts such

as commands to steal or cause another harm. Damon (1977) found that with acts

entailing theft or physical harm to persons, young children (aged 4–7 years) judge

the act itself rather than the status of the authority allowing or forbidding it. Laupa

(1994) found that preschoolers (aged 4–6 years) accept peer and adult authorities

based on the type of act commanded rather than their position in the school. They

accept persons who lack authority attributes as legitimate when they give commands

directed toward preventing harm (telling children not to ﬁght), and reject persons

who possess authority attributes when they give commands that could lead to harm

(allowing children to ﬁght).

As children’s ability to make their own moral and social conventional judgments

increases, they also begin to judge authorities on the basis of how well they make such

judgments. For example, Killen, Breton, Ferguson, and Handler (1994) found that pre-

school-aged children prefer teachers to use interventions that are consistent with the

domain of the transgression (e.g., telling a child who has hit another child, “You shouldn’t

hit because it hurts the other person”) rather than ones that are inconsistent with the

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 187

domain (e.g., “You shouldn’t do that; it’s against the rules to hit” or simply saying, “That’s

not the way a student should act.”)

Interpersonal conﬂicts can stimulate children to take different points of view in order

to restore balance in social situations, to produce ideas as to how to coordinate the needs

of self and others, and to consider the rights of others—especially claims to ownership

and possession of objects. For example, research by Killen and her colleagues (Killen,

1989; Killen & Naigles, 1995; Killen & Nucci, 1995; Killen & Sueyoshi, 1995; Rende &

Killen, 1992) have demonstrated that in the absence of adult intervention, young chil-

dren are often quite capable of addressing social conﬂicts with peers in ways that take

the needs of others into account. In one study, approximately 70% of preschool chil-

dren’s disputes during free play were resolved by the children themselves, either through

reconciliation by the instigator or through compromising or bargaining (Killen, 1991).

In another study, Eisenberg, Lundy, Shell, and Roth (1985) found that preschool children

justiﬁed meeting the requests of peers with references to the needs of others and to one’s

relationships with others while reasons for meeting the requests of adults were justiﬁed

with references to authority and punishment. This suggests that preschool children are

already capable of reciprocity or its precursors in many situations, and supports Piaget’s

claims that children best develop reciprocity in interactions with peers.

In light of this research, it is clear that children gradually construct moral understand-

ings and convictions along a continuum from egocentrism to reciprocity, from heter-

onomy to autonomy, and from early intuitions about harm to conceptions of fairness

based on moral reciprocity and considerations of equity (Damon, 1977; Nucci, 2001).

They do so in the context of both peer and adult interactions, through their own experi-

ences and observations, and through direct teaching from peers and adults. Because

young children generate their initial understandings of morality out of direct experi-

ences in social interactions, one of the primary contributions of schools is to help chil-

dren frame these experiences in moral terms.

Constructivism Compared to Other Approaches

Tension between traditional and progressive approaches to moral education has existed

for over 100 years and continues to this day. One of the most vocal proponents of the

traditional approach is William Bennett, whose books (The Book of Virtues and The Chil-

dren’s Book of Virtues) are compilations of stories to be used in children’s moral educa-

tion (Bennett, 1993, 1995). Bennett criticizes constructivist educators who encourage

children to judge, examine, and critically evaluate moral matters on their own. He dis-

approves of such programs because of their emphasis on children’s choices, decisions,

deliberations, and judgments. Instead, he advocates the use of stories with clear moral

lessons. Although most constructivist early educators believe that telling children stories

can be useful, they caution that children must be able to actually understand the story

and moral principles involved (Narvaez, 2002). Here, again, the debate is over whether

the acquisition of morality involves primarily the direct transmission of societal norms

and values or whether it is based on children’s understandings of justice, rights, and the

welfare of others (for a further critique of traditional approaches to moral education, see

Turiel, 2001).

Contemporary versions of traditional moral education include programs such as

Character Counts. In Character Counts, moral conduct is learned through direct instruc-

tion about the Six Pillars of Character: Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness,

188 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

Caring, and Citizenship. Children are presented with examples of good acts associated

with each virtue, listen to stories about decision making, and engage in school-wide con-

tests with awards for learning the virtues and applying them to their daily lives. Although

there is a balance between rote memorization and the application of reasoning and

problem solving, Character Counts is a predominantly “top-down,” “teacher-centered”

approach to moral education. For a review of several commercially available character

education curricula, see Goodman and Lesnick (2004).

In addition to traditional approaches to early moral education, there have been a number

of “blended” approaches that combine elements of traditional, adult-centered, or “sociocen-

tric” models of socialization and moral development (e.g., Durkheim, 1925/1961) with the

more autonomous developmental emphasis of constructivist theory (Piaget, 1932/1965).

For example, the Child Development Project combined constructivist theory, social learn-

ing theory, attribution theory, and attachment theory to create a broad, evidence-based

approach to children’s prosocial development involving classroom, school-wide, and

home-school activities (Brunn, this volume). The Character Education Partnership is also

a broad-based, blended approach to social and moral development based on 11 principles

of effective character education (Lickona, Schaps, & Lewis, 2003).

COMPONENTS OF CURRENT APPROACHES TO CONSTRUCTIVIST

Early Moral Education

The central feature of current approaches to constructivist moral education is the

establishment of a sociomoral atmosphere based on mutual respect. This sociomoral

atmosphere permeates every aspect of the child’s experience at school. Recognizing that

children’s convictions about fairness and justice develop when they have the opportunity

to reﬂect on social and moral problems in their lives, constructivist teachers strive to

provide children with a safe environment in which they can make mistakes, experience

the consequences of their actions, and develop their own reasons for behaving in par-

ticular ways. Constructivist teachers also recognize the power of the “hidden curric-

ulum.” Teachers constantly convey moral messages—messages about what is right and

wrong, good and bad—and these messages, conscious or unconscious on the part of the

teacher, inﬂuence children’s moral development in profound ways. Therefore, construc-

tivist teachers recognize that they engage in social and moral education throughout the

school day.

According to DeVries and Zan (2012), teachers can create an atmosphere of mutual

respect by cooperating with children, minimizing the exercise of external authority to

the extent possible and practical, and sharing power with them as appropriate. The com-

ponents of constructivist education that are most salient to children’s moral develop-

ment include encouraging children to make classroom rules and decisions, providing

children with opportunities to play group games, assisting children in resolving (and

learning how to resolve) their conﬂicts, and supporting children in reﬂecting on social

and moral issues in literature and in the classroom.

Minimizing the Exercise of External Authority

One of constructivist teachers’ primary aims is for children to become increasingly able to

regulate their own behavior in the absence of adult authority. In order to promote auto-

nomy and prevent an overbalance of heteronomy, constructivist teachers consciously

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 189

monitor their interactions with children. Authoritarian demanding, emotional intim-

idation, and arbitrary punishments have no place in a constructivist classroom; neither

do passive permissiveness or “letting children run wild”—that is, failing to take action

when children engage in unsafe, aggressive, or deﬁant behaviors.

Constructivist teachers strive to support children in constructing internal feelings of

necessity about behaving in socially acceptable ways. One way they do this is by refrain-

ing from punishing children, and instead looking for opportunities for children to learn

from the natural consequences of their actions. For example, when a child splashes water

out of the water table, rather than lecturing and/or punishing, a constructivist teacher

may point out to the child the problem that the wet ﬂoor poses for others in the class-

room and require the child to clean up the water.

Young children are not naturally self-regulating, and so the exercise of adult author-

ity is sometimes necessary, especially when children’s safety is involved. However, even

in these situations, constructivist teachers try to ﬁnd ways to promote children’s auto-

nomy as they exert authority over them. They do this by explaining to children, in

language that children can understand, the reasons why they must take certain actions.

For example, if a child behaves aggressively on the playground, the teacher may insist

that the child play apart from the other children for the remainder of the outside time.

The constructivist teacher will take the time to explain to the child that his or her

actions hurt other children and that it is the teacher’s job to keep all of the children

safe; because the child continues to hurt other children, he or she cannot be allowed

near them. The teacher will also actively support the child in learning how to take the

perspective of others, ﬁnd alternative ways to negotiate with others, and develop sat-

isfying peer relationships.

Sharing Power: Rule Making and Decision Making

Constructivist teachers consciously seek opportunities for children to exercise authentic

power in the classroom. Given the ages of the children they teach, this can sometimes be

challenging. Young children lack the knowledge and maturity to make many decisions

concerning life in the classroom. Yet, some decisions (such as what to name the class pet,

where to go on the next ﬁeld trip, how to arrange the classroom, what to display on the

walls, or what project to undertake as a class) are within children’s capabilities. When

children are supported in making decisions that affect their common life in the class-

room, they gain in experience, maturity, and conﬁdence; they learn that their actions can

have a positive effect on their environment; and they gain experience in participatory

democracy.

Young children are quite capable of making rules that dictate how they wish to be

treated in the classroom. DeVries and Zan (2012) describe several instances of young

children suggesting rules for their classroom, such as a rule made by four-year-olds pro-

hibiting name calling—“Call them your name. Don’t call them naughty girl or naughty

boy” (pp. 150–151)—and rules made by kindergarteners concerning safe treatment of

the class guinea pig—“Don’t squeeze, drop, or throw him. Hold him gently. Hold him

like a baby” (p. 147). DeVries and Zan stress that teachers should assist children in think-

ing about the reasons for rules, and that they should encourage children to include the

reason in the statement of the rule. A teacher at the constructivist laboratory school

where DeVries and Zan conducted research reported on a rule made by her ﬁrst graders

one year that stated: “Don’t laugh when people pass gas. It might hurt their feelings”

190 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

(B. Van Meeteren, personal communication, 2002). This rule reﬂected an issue that was

important to them because many of them had experience with just such an embarrassing

situation. When children make rules concerning problems they care about deeply, they

tend to remember these rules and insist that others follow them.

Group Games

Group games are a vital part of the constructivist curriculum, both because of the oppor-

tunities for academic learning (number, logical reasoning, literacy, etc.) and also because

of their implications for moral development. Games provide a unique opportunity for

children to voluntarily submit to a system of rules that govern their behavior in a speciﬁc

context. In order to play a game successfully, children must agree to the rules, abide by

the rules, and accept the consequences of the rules. Therefore, even if a game is com-

petitive, children must cooperate in order to play it (Kamii & DeVries, 1980; DeVries,

Zan, & Hildebrandt, 2002; Hildebrandt & Zan, 2002; Zan, 1996).

Games also provide opportunities for children to take the perspective of another

person. A simple game such as Tic-Tac-Toe includes opportunities to play using both

offensive and defensive strategies. In order to do the latter, children must think about

where the other player is likely to place the next marker. Card games also provide chil-

dren opportunities to take the perspective of another. Basic concepts such as keeping

one’s cards hidden so another cannot see them reﬂects the ability to understand that if

another player sees one’s cards, that person will have an advantage (something that is not

obvious to the egocentric child).

Games also present unique opportunities for children to learn what happens when

someone does not follow the rules. When players cheat, other players become upset and

protest. When children consistently cheat at games and ﬁnd that no one wants to play

with them, the teacher takes the time to explain that the other children’s reactions (refus-

ing to play the game with them) are due to their cheating, and that if they want other

children to play with them, they will have to stop cheating. The teacher also works with

the child to overcome the circumstances that lead him or her to feel the need to cheat.

Conﬂict Resolution

Conﬂicts are part of the constructivist curriculum and contribute to children’s moral

education. When children work to resolve their conﬂicts with others, they develop their

ability to take the perspective of another and negotiate with others. Constructivist teach-

ers take an active role in supporting young children in resolving their conﬂicts. They help

children learn how to speak their minds and listen to each other. They sometimes serve

as translators, clarifying and stating the problem so that all of the participants have a

shared understanding of what happened. They support children in thinking of possible

solutions, and when children cannot think of solutions themselves, they make sugges-

tions. Perhaps most importantly, they help children repair broken relationships without

forcing children to be insincere (for example, by requiring apologies, no matter how

meaningless or unfelt).

Moral Discussion

Discussions of social and moral dilemmas, both real-life and hypothetical, are important

means of helping children take the perspectives of others. Each type contributes to chil-

dren’s moral development.

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 191

Real-life events in the classroom are valuable because of their relevance to children. Chil-

dren are very familiar, for example, with how it feels when a group of children takes all of

the blocks in the block center and does not allow others to use any of the blocks. A discus-

sion about how it feels, and how they might come up with a fair way to share the blocks,

is likely to elicit considerable discussion concerning the rights of others. As children hear

others describing how they experience the situation, they have the opportunity to take the

perspectives of their friends and classmates and feel empathy for their experiences.

Hypothetical dilemmas also have a role to play. Sometimes real-life events are so

highly charged emotionally that children cannot talk about them without falling apart.

In such cases, teachers can use ﬁctional situations to explore classroom dilemmas. It is

amazing how children can enter into a problem acted out, for example, by the teacher

using puppets, and generate ideas concerning how the puppets might feel, what they

should do, and why.

Children’s literature provides opportunities for children’s experiences to be broad-

ened even more. Good literature has the potential to transport children into the lives

of others and experience emotions that they might otherwise never experience. For

example, hearing books about the experiences of recent immigrants to the United States

can give native-born children a chance to understand what it might feel like to look

and sound completely different from everyone else in the culture. The Developmental

Studies Center (Developmental Studies Center, 1995) has developed an entire curric-

ulum (grades K–8) around the use of literature to support children’s ethical develop-

ment (Brunn, this volume).

RESEARCH ON CONSTRUCTIVIST EARLY MORAL EDUCATION

Research on the effects of constructivist moral education on young children’s social and

cognitive development is relatively sparse. Studies of most relevance to the evaluation of

constructivist education are those that compare constructivist and non-constructivist

classrooms, and those that compare democratic and authoritarian teaching styles.

DeVries, Haney, & Zan (1991) and DeVries, Reese-Learned, & Morgan (1991)

studied the effects of classroom atmospheres of three kindergarten classrooms—a

direct-instruction classroom, a constructivist classroom, and an eclectic classroom—

on children’s sociomoral development. The teacher in the direct-instruction classroom

provided a program of small- and large-group instruction that used primarily recita-

tion, fast-paced drills, and worksheets. Learning centers were never used, and children

rarely left their desks. The teacher’s interactions with children were highly authoritarian.

The teacher used punishment, threats of punishments, and rewards to control children’s

behavior. The constructivist teacher implemented a program similar to the constructiv-

ist approach described above. The curriculum was child-centered and interest-driven.

Children engaged in freely chosen activities. Instruction was embedded in learning

centers and naturally occurring events. The teacher established a classroom atmosphere

based on mutual respect, minimized her own exercise of authority, cooperated with chil-

dren as much as possible, and engaged children in conﬂict resolution. She did not use

punishments, threats of punishments, or rewards, but instead worked to help children

learn how to regulate their own behavior. The eclectic teacher (the label came from her)

provided a program that contained elements of both the other two programs, including

some direct instruction and some child-centered activities. The sociomoral atmosphere

192 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

of the eclectic classroom was slightly less authoritarian than the direct instruction class-

room, but not as cooperative as the constructivist classroom. The teacher used some

punishments and rewards, but her control of the children was not as absolute as that of

the direct-instruction teacher.

Analysis of the sociomoral atmospheres of the three classrooms focused on the levels

of interpersonal understanding reﬂected in the teacher–child interactions that occurred

during two complete days in each of the three classrooms. Using an adaptation of

Selman’s (Selman, 1980; Selman and Schultz, 1990) conceptualization of Enacted Inter-

personal Understanding, over 20,000 teacher–child interactions were micro-analytically

coded from transcripts and video.

Results of the analysis (DeVries, Haney, & Zan, 1991) showed great differences in teach-

ers’ enacted interpersonal understanding. The direct instruction teacher’s interactions with

children were primarily low level, unilateral interactions, with a few higher level reciprocal

interactions, and even fewer mutual interactions. The eclectic teacher’s interactions were

much like those of the direct instruction teacher, predominantly at unilateral level, with a

few reciprocal interactions, and fewer mutual interactions. The constructivist teacher had

many fewer unilateral interactions and many more reciprocal and mutual interactions. The

conclusion was that the sociomoral atmospheres were very different in the three classrooms.

The constructivist classroom atmosphere was much more cooperative, and the other two

classrooms’ atmospheres were much more authoritarian.

The companion study compared the sociomoral development of the children in these

three classrooms (DeVries, Reese-Learned, & Morgan, 1991). The results reﬂected the

sociomoral atmospheres of the classroom. Pairs of children (n = 56) were videotaped in two

naturalistic situations outside the classroom (playing a board game and dividing up some

stickers), and their interactions were coded according to the Selman levels. Results showed

that although a predominance of unilateral interactions characterized all three groups

and impulsive behavior was about the same for all three groups, children from the direct

instruction and eclectic classrooms engaged in less reciprocal behavior than did children

from the constructivist classroom. In addition, children from the constructivist classroom

resolved signiﬁcantly more of their conﬂicts than children from the other two classrooms.

In an earlier study, DeVries and Göncü (1987) used the board game format to

compare interpersonal understanding between four-year-old children from constructiv-

ist and Montessori classrooms. The pattern of ﬁndings was similar to those described

above. Children from the constructivist classroom had a signiﬁcantly higher proportion

of reciprocal interactions and resolved a signiﬁcantly higher proportion of their conﬂicts

than children from the Montessori classroom.

Araujo (1999) conducted a longitudinal study of moral autonomy in 56 six-year-old

children in three kindergartens. One center, serving children from low-income families, was

constructivist and had a cooperative, democratic classroom climate. The other two centers,

one serving children from low-income families and one serving children from middle- or

upper-income families, were traditional, and had more authoritarian classroom climates.

All children went to traditional authoritarian schools in subsequent years.

Children responded to eight moral dilemmas adapted from Piaget (1932/1965) in 1992

(kindergarten year), 1995, and 1999. Children’s responses were categorized as heteronomous,

autonomous, or transitional. Results showed that children from the constructivist center

expressed higher personal autonomy in 1992 and 1995 than children from the authoritarian

centers. In 1999, autonomy scores of the children from the authoritarian centers were higher

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 193

than children from the constructivist center. The author speculates that this ﬁnding is due

to “values education” in one of the traditional schools during the last two years of the study

period. It may also be that many of the children were reaching a ceiling on the dilemmas.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS AND CRITICISMS OF CONSTRUCTIVIST

EARLY MORAL EDUCATION

Within the moral domain, we have encountered two common misconceptions about

constructivist education: (1) constructivist education is permissive, and (2) constructiv-

ist education is spontaneous and unstructured.

Some educators mistakenly believe that constructivist education is permissive, that

teachers take an entirely “hands-off ” approach to classroom discipline and children do

whatever they want to do. This belief has several possible sources. The ﬁrst is the mis-

taken belief that Piaget’s stages of development are maturational and unfold according

to a biologically predetermined plan. According to this view, the teacher’s role is to create

the least restrictive environment so as to foster children’s natural, preordained growth.

The second source of this belief stems from the involvement of children in making

classroom rules. Some interpret this to mean that only child-made rules govern the

classroom. However, constructivist teachers, like all good early childhood teachers, must

make sure children are safe. Based on interviews with constructivist teachers, DeVries

and Zan (2012) identiﬁed numerous non-negotiable rules that they categorize as safety

and health norms (i.e., wearing safety goggles at woodworking, washing hands before

cooking, etc.), moral norms (i.e., taking fair turns, not hurting others, etc.), and discre-

tionary norms (i.e., following the daily schedule, wearing a smock at the water table, etc.)

(DeVries & Zan, 2012, pp. 158–161).

Finally, some interpret the constructivist emphasis on child initiative and choice

as evidence of permissiveness. During activity time, children in constructivist class-

rooms are free to choose activities that appeal to their interests and purposes. To the

uninformed observer, these classrooms may appear chaotic. However, to the informed

observer, children’s actions occur within a general framework of order, including rules

to which everyone has agreed. When conﬂicts occur, children are encouraged to resolve

them, with or without the help of the teacher. If children’s engagement with the mater-

ials appears to be shallow and unproductive, the teacher redirects the child’s attention

toward more challenging activities.

Another common misconception is that constructivist education is spontaneous and

unsystematic. In the moral realm, there are no lists of character traits to memorize, no

“values of the week,” and no tangible rewards for good behavior. To an outside observer,

the moral curriculum may well appear to be “improvised” based on problems that nat-

urally occur in the classroom. Although there may be standard procedures for conﬂict

resolution (such as rules for the Peace Bench), children are not expected to memorize

and follow them exactly. A typical conﬂict resolution for two four-year-olds might be:

David: I didn’t like it when you hit me.

Sam: Well, I didn’t like it when you took my truck.

After this exchange, the two boys might choose to jump up from the Peace Bench and

resume play without any plan for future action. If the children are satisﬁed with the

194 s C. Hildebrandt and B. Zan

exchange, the teacher might not interfere, assuming that this is the level of discourse

that is developmentally appropriate for them at this time. As children develop, they

become better able to engage in conﬂict resolutions involving higher levels of interper-

sonal understanding and to make plans for future actions that would beneﬁt themselves

as well as the other person.

Whereas it is true that some constructivist teachers’ approaches to moral education

are more spontaneous and improvised than others, this does not mean that they do not

plan for moral lessons. Constructivist teachers’ lesson plans often include moral lessons,

but they try to keep these plans ﬂexible in case there are “teachable moments” in which

children can construct new knowledge within the moral domain.

Criticisms of Constructivist Early Moral Education

A number of criticisms of constructivist early moral education have emerged both from

within the ranks of constructivist researchers and educators, and from without. Current

tensions revolve around the appropriate amount of direct teaching for children of different

ages, the appropriate amount of “discovery learning,” what actions should be considered

negotiable and non-negotiable, and the amount of coercion coming from the teacher.

In an exchange between DeVries and her colleagues (DeVries, Hildebrandt, & Zan,

2000; DeVries et al., 2002) and Goodman (2000, 2002), Goodman lodged several criti-

cisms against constructivist moral education. According to Goodman, many examples

of constructivist early education are developmentally inappropriate for most preopera-

tional children because they are egocentric and incapable of moral reﬂection. Goodman

advocates that teachers should “exploit the child’s natural heteronomy by advancing clear

rules” (Goodman, 2000, p. 49). According to Goodman, young children are not ready

to make their own rules. Goodman explains that “Encouraging premature autonomous

thinking is analogous to giving premature reading instruction—you may get decoding

but not understanding” (Goodman, 2000, p. 48).

It is possible that one source of Goodman’s criticism of DeVries’s approach to con-

structivist moral education rests not in its tenets but rather in Goodman’s understand-

ing of the capabilities of very young children. In fact, some of the practices advocated

by Goodman closely resemble DeVries and Zan’s principles of teaching. For example,

Goodman and Lesnick, in their book Moral Education: A Teacher-Centered Approach

(2004), state that moral education programs “should provide opportunities for student

participation and student decision making. This participation must be developmentally

staged: less for the younger child, in whom the cultivation of habits and compassion

takes center stage; more for the older child” (p. 188). Goodman’s criticism of DeVries

and Zan’s approach seems to be rooted in part in an underestimation of just how much

moral reasoning and deliberation young children are capable of engaging in. DeVries

and Zan (1994, 2012) describe numerous examples of preschool-aged children reason-

ing about fairness, justice, and compassion in their own words. If the moral issues that

teachers bring to young children are selected carefully for their ease of understanding,

young children are remarkably capable of engaging with them.

In the social domain, where children are notoriously egocentric, incipient decentering

can often be found in the classroom. Research shows that young children do not suddenly

overcome egocentrism. It is overcome little by little, in thousands of small decentrations

that eventually lead to reciprocity (Flavell & Miller, 1998; Wellman & Gelman, 1998). A

large body of research by Turiel and his colleagues has shown that young children do

Moral Education in Early Childhood s 195

understand the intrinsic negative consequences of hurting others, especially when the

harm is concrete and physical (Nucci, 1996; Smetana, in press; Turiel, 1998). Whereas

questions concerning justice are understood later in development than welfare, certain

issues concerning justice can also be addressed from an early age (e.g., turn-taking).

Thus, from a constructivist perspective, the notion of a continuum from egocentrism

to reciprocity guides teachers’ thinking about children’s development. In contrast to the

waiting approach (laissez faire), or the tell-them-what-to-do approach (authoritarian),

constructivist teachers strive to create the kinds of situations in which children gradually

come to feel a necessity to treat others in moral ways. Constructivist education offers

strategies teachers can use to help children begin to overcome egocentrism and become

more reﬂective, decentered, and autonomous thinkers. These strategies are detailed in

DeVries & Zan (2012) and summarized in DeVries et al. (2000).

Piaget argued that authorities’ injunctions (such as not to lie) simply cover up and

conceal the child’s egocentric misunderstanding and do not help to change it. Simply

enforcing rules when children do not understand them is not likely to change their

thinking. Teachers need to make an effort to help children begin to understand why

certain behaviors are wrong in terms of the effects of the behaviors on others and on

relationships. Children do not need to be concrete operational to begin to understand

the reciprocity of sharing, turn-taking, and perspective-taking. It is true that even for

some ﬁve-year-olds sharing may mean “getting” or “giving up” something. However, in

an environment where the adult emphasizes the feelings and rights of others, children

even at age three begin to understand the reciprocity involved in sharing and turn-taking

and to take the perspectives of others. The constructivist strategy is to create situations

in which children will be confronted with the differing ideas and desires of others, and

to encourage them to decenter and consider the others’ point of view. It is through these

processes that egocentrism is gradually overcome.

Need for Further Research

Creating an optimum balance between direct instruction and discovery learning, spon-

taneous and planned activities, and actions that are negotiable and non-negotiable is an

ongoing challenge for constructivist teachers. Since teaching is both an art and a science,

we expect that further reﬁnements of constructivist methods will be developed for many

years to come.

Many of these problems are best addressed through systematic research. In this chapter,

we reviewed research comparing constructivist with other types of classrooms. There is

also a growing body of research conducted exclusively in constructivist classrooms (for

example, Zan & Hildebrandt, 2003, 2005). Much more research is needed in order to test

and reﬁne constructivist early moral education for all children, regardless of culture and

socioeconomic status.

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198

TOWARD A THEORY OF THE JUST COMMUNITY APPROACH

Effects of Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education

Fritz K. Oser

This chapter expands upon the concept of Kohlberg’s just community (JC) approach

for moral education. It is intended as a follow-up to the material provided by Power and

Higgins-D’Alessandro (2008) in their chapter for the ﬁrst edition of the Handbook of

Moral and Character Education. Based upon precursors, experiences and research results,

I will discuss suggestions for enlarging the basic idea of a just community with respect

to elements of civic, pro-social, systemic, and participation-oriented beliefs. This is fol-

lowed by accounts of basic functional parts of a JC, a more detailed analysis of resistance

to JC schools, accounts of practical examples, and advice on making JC schools work.

The ﬁnal section of the chapter proposes how to expand the theory of just community

schools so that moral and social education become the basis for academic learning.

ENLARGING THE BASIC IDEA

“The just community approach has two major aims: (1) to promote students’ moral

development, and (2) to transform the moral atmosphere of the school into a moral com-

munity” (Power & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008, p. 231). Although this statement is correct

and relates fully to Kohlberg’s conception (see Kohlberg, 1985), it is not fully differenti-

ated and does not include enough of the following: (a) a theory of civic education, (b) a

theory of school functioning, (c) a theory of social beliefs and social learning, and (d) a

theory of complex morality. Having guided several just community schools in Germany

and Switzerland, it seems to me that empowerment of students through the process of

building up such a just community (JC) school has implications that go beyond moral

development and moral atmosphere. Since the JC approach is a comprehensive enterprise,

it includes theoretically and practically more than positive non-indoctrinative morality.

It also encompasses systemic and collective dangers, fragilities, and inevitable mistakes—

factors mostly not taken into consideration in descriptions of the JC approach. Enlarging

the basic concept of Kohlberg’s idea and its implementation during his time may help in

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 199

understanding resistances of many teachers and principals to involving themselves more

profoundly into the realization of such an idealistic vision today.

ON THE RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

It is not self-evident that most learning processes within the construction of a JC are often

seen as “painful” from students’ points of view once the “newness bias” of the installa-

tion of such a school-form is gone. Since learning involves overcoming resistant forces, it

becomes immediately apparent that changing attitudes, beliefs, convictions—and even

knowledge bases—is often rough going. If we learn that we must change, we like to resist,

especially if the goal toward this change is not seen as worthy enough compared to other

learning goals such as, for example, building knowledge in computer programming. Here

is an illustrative example. Joining about 250 other students between 12 and 15 years of

age for a JC meeting, a tall boy in the last year of compulsory schooling said to me:

Dr. Oser, do we have to decide on school issues again? This takes from us so much

thinking and accountability work. Look, if you, you alone, decide, that is much easier

for us. You are an adult person at the university, and we believe that you do the right

thing. We do what you want us to do. Why shall we be concerned about others? We

are friendly; we prepare for life; and we will be honest. That is all we need. To be

moral doesn’t give you an apprenticeship position later in an important ﬁrm. And to

learn democracy has no value for this.

This 15-year-old philosopher fully understood what we were doing. He knew that parti-

cipation means to be responsible and accountable, but after a year of hard work, he did

not see the value of it—even worse, he could see the value, but he did not want to be

involved in it. We may add an even more gripping example. Althof (1998), who founded

and scaffolded many JC schools, experienced the following situation in a teacher training

university in which he had created a JC approach a couple of months previously with

these young adults. At a meeting that he could not attend because of illness, some students

amazingly proposed to give up this whole concept. Although no action was taken subse-

quently, they won the vote. This was a clear sign that some of these adults understood that,

for the system to survive, school reform demands a total engagement: availability, respons-

ibility, and care. And they were well aware of the JC system’s fragility.

I present this rather problematic account because authors are, in general, too enthusiastic

about the JC approach; some of them see it as a means for solving a lot of school problems, a

technique like “give an I message” (e.g., “I see your point about . . .; however, I believe that, as

a group, we feel that your message . . .”) and everything will be solved. Others conceive it as a

great hope for a better learning climate, and they feel especially that this could be a chance

for learning what a positive democracy could be. However, without destroying these hopes,

we distinguish the JC approach primarily as a means for learning what we think is a social

good for students or primarily as an endpoint for living in a world that could indeed be a

better one than we currently experience in most schools. The JC approach as an endpoint

is an imposition for all the participants: for the students, but especially for the teachers and

principals. They have to exercise what we call the “presupposition of autonomy” (see the

paragraph on the teachers’ role), meaning that teachers have to act as if students already

have autonomy in order to develop it—this is hard pedagogical work.

200 s F.K. Oser

However, before continuing with the case for an expanded theory of the just com-

munity approach, I wish to enlarge the context with a history of related endeavors and a

history of just community implementations.

PRECURSORS

Pestalozzi

For Europeans, to speak about the JC approach inevitably invokes a connection with

Heinrich Pestalozzi. In the years 1798 and 1799, when French troops entered the so-

called old Swiss cantons, soldiers focused particular attention to one of the founding

cantons, Schwyz. The result was terrible poverty, broken families, orphans, sicknesses,

etc. Pestalozzi received the task from the new central government of Switzerland to care

for the lost children of Schwyz, spawning the mythos of Pestalozzi as father of orphans.

When he describes the children’s poverty, their hunger, and lack of access to rooms and

beds—all within the tension between Catholics and Protestants against a background of

occupying French troops (see Pestalozzi, 1799/1965, the letter of Stans)—his discussion

amounts to a prescription for how to educate for a humane orientation in difﬁcult times.

This experience led him to found a children’s community based upon the core assump-

tion that children’s moral development would emerge from fulﬁlling the demands of

daily living and work.

The daily work element consisted of three stages. The ﬁrst was to develop a moral

mood (a kind of basic trust) through the fulﬁllment of the fundamental needs of the

child. From this core of basic trust, the child then learned to engage in doing the good;

to act so that the good becomes habituated. Finally, in the third stage, the child learned

about evaluating both the good and the bad. For this latter phase, Pestalozzi introduced

ethical constructs, rules, and notions to explain to the children reasons for being good.

In this concept the feeling (heart) presupposes the acting (hand), which was followed by

reasoning (mind or head). Pestalozzi’s personal connectedness to the children was a kind

of educational guarantee for stimulating these processes. Thus, Pestalozzi introduced the

radical notion for the time period, that moral education emerged from a quasi-family

structure that formed the context within which children experienced the good feelings,

and responsibilities for action guided by moral judgment that were the basis of children’s

moral growth.

Makarenko

In many of my courses, I present the following story—by Anton Makarenko (1938,

pp. 124ff.) to teachers and educational psychologists who know about Kohlberg’s JC

approach:

There was a young man, a commander and quasi-leader, who was responsible for the

entire community. He was engaged in cultural work as a member of a theater group.

He was a good worker, and enjoyed the esteem and the respect of all—including

me. He was one of the older, neglected young persons that I had discovered. He had

already experienced a lot of delinquency and vagabond behavior before coming to

us (Makarenko, 1976, p. 124). One day a new radio was stolen; it disappeared from

the sleeping room. It belonged to a boy who had done hard work to get the money to

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 201

purchase it. The young group leader organized a community meeting and proposed

an investigation. Later, one of the other boys found the radio in a hidden theater

room, and he and others subsequently took turns observing this place to watch for

who would come and use the radio. After a while, it was precisely the boy who served

as group commander who entered the room looking for the radio. The observing stu-

dents thus discovered that it was he who was the thief. In the following community

meetings, they decided, after long debates, to dismiss the boy from his post and have

him move out of the home. Makarenko, the founder and leader of the home, resisted

the dismissal. He called on an upper committee to overrule the students’ decision,

proposed other forms of penance for the young offender, and otherwise fought for a

different decision. Finally and painfully, however, he had to accept it.

Teachers and researchers that hear this story generally think that it depicts a typical

Kohlbergian dilemma from the Bronx JC school or from the Niantic correction JC

system. But the story stems from Makarenko’s collective education home. In the story I

just omitted words such as “kosomolse,” “communards,” and “tetchiest” that would

remind one of the soviet style of collective working colonies for young orphans, street-

children, criminal youth groups, and similar outcasts.

Makarenko had, about 50 years earlier than Kohlberg, similar goals and ideas—namely,

to educate morally through the building of communities that were self-governing and

to develop high moral standards. In his so-called Gorki-colony (1920–1928) and later in

the Dzerzinskij community (1927–1935), he tried to build up a system of rules through

a special concept of discipline with a strong human face. Makarenko is often misunder-

stood and dismissed by American readers as a communist. He was, of course, inﬂuenced

by the ideas of the Russian Revolution, but his writings are about how to build up resili-

ence for poor children and adolescents in wartime and terrible political chaos. His posi-

tions are not political cant, but are indeed serious educational reﬂections.

For him, similar to Durkheim (1961), discipline produces feelings of security and leads

to freedom of thinking and doing the right thing. Interestingly, Makarenko developed three

stages of internalization of this freedom-producing discipline: stage 1, to ask for its reali-

zation and set norms with great conviction and authority; stage 2, to build groups that

share this demand and see the advantages of living with a common discipline; and stage

3, to transform the demand for moral norms into a common-sense community value. He

described the dangers and pitfalls of each stage, and he posited that the task of the leader

is to give, in each decision-making situation, a face of understanding for these weaknesses.

Lastly, Makarenko engaged himself in building these communities for helping disadvan-

taged children and adolescents to survive—quite similar to what Pestalozzi did.

Korczak

One of the most impressive forefathers of the JC approach is Janusz Korczak (1967), the

so-called Polish Pestalozzi. With Stepha Wilczynska, he installed a parliamentary form

of his orphan home containing between 200 and 300 children from the streets between

three and 14 years of age. Korczak’s biography is impressive. He was born into a well-

settled Jewish family in Poland. After becoming a well-known medical doctor and par-

ticipating in World War I on the Russian front, he gave up his medical career to take

over a ﬁrst and then a second home for orphans. Writing under the pseudonym Janusz

Korczak, he contributed articles to educational journals and developed the ﬁrst concept

202 s F.K. Oser

of children’s rights. Accompanying 300 deported children, he died in the Treblinka con-

centration camp in 1942. His greatest idea (and its decisive realization) was a kind of JC

approach in a very special sense. He installed in his home a parliamentary concept in

which all children were fully involved.

The elements of this system were as follows:

s PLENARYSTUDENTMEETINGSFORDECIDINGONALLIMPORTANTLIFEISSUESOFTHEHOME

s THE FRIENDSHIP ORCOMRADE COURT TODEALWITH THETASK OF TREATINGCHILDRENSAND

adolescents’ infractions of rules in a fair but decisive way;

s A LIBRARY WITH BOOKS THAT ALSO INCLUDED +ORCZAKS DIARY DESCRIBING THE DEVELOP-

ment of each child so that the children could read what he was thinking about

them and thus to be able to ask for changes when they felt misinterpreted;

s ABLACKBOARDINTHEENTRANCEHALLFORINFORMATIONSHARING

The most important component was the plenary assembly mentioned above and the

friendship court elected regularly by the full parliament. Since Korczak knew that chil-

dren could judge other children harshly, he developed a comprehensive body of regula-

tions to stimulate a basic sensitivity for forgiveness. The ﬁrst 100 rules included

elements of forgiveness. All of the subsequent rules were numbered in 100s (200, 300,

etc.) to convey the notion that these referred to serious infractions associated with

severe punishment and should be invoked rarely—or as in the case of rule 1000 practi-

cally never. Let us look at some examples.

Rule 1: The court declares that the complaint against A has been withdrawn.

Rule 30: The court declares that A could not have acted differently.

Rule 67: The court forgives A for the bad thing done without reﬂection.

Rule 94: The court forgives A because someone imploringly asks for it (a friend or a

relative, etc.).

Then come the big and heavy stones.

Rule 100: The court states without forgiveness that A did act negatively.

Rule 600: The court declares that A did act badly. This judgment has to be made

public in the house newspaper and on the blackboard.

Rule 1000: The court dismisses A from the home. This judgment has to be pub-

lished in the newspaper.

All this was a sensitivity process in which the delinquent behaviors that kids and ado-

lescents committed were thoroughly investigated. Korczak (1967) wanted students to

become reﬂective not only about their own behavior but also about the behavior of the

others. Korczak used this experience to develop the universal rights for children

adopted by the United Nations in 1949. He declared, for example, that the child has a

right to keep a secret, a right to personal belongings, a right to be loved, and, especially,

a right to full human respect. Human respect had three faces: (a) the right to live in this

day and age, (b) the right to be oneself, and (c) the right to one’s own death, which

means to take risks, to explore the world, to receive presupposed responsibility for dis-

covering new and challenging situations.

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 203

It is quite interesting that Korczak’s home community includes the same elements as

Kohlberg’s JC approach. There was a regular community meeting, a fairness committee

(friendship court), a preparation group elected by the plenary community, and the pos-

sibility of always demanding a plenary get-together (a real JC meeting). The differences

are also quite obvious. First, Korczak’s concept of a warm parliamentary interchange is a

life concept and not a school form. The children in Korczak’s home lived there for their

existence whereas Kohlberg’s JC approach is a structure implanted into the school. In

the JC school, children and adolescents return home afterwards; in Korczak’s home, the

children leave the parliamentary home for visiting the classical school, outside in the city,

which at that time had no democratic roots. Another difference is that Korczak had no

developmental theory of growth, but in his famous book How to Love a Child (1967), he

developed a theory of moral sensibility in the context of norm and rule induction. It is

of great historical interest that Lawrence Kohlberg learned about Korczak in 1980, relat-

ively late in his life. In his last chapter of Essays on Moral Development, Volume One, he

describes Korczak as an example of stage six or even stage seven (Kohlberg, 1981).

Kibbutz Life

In several places when Kohlberg introduces us to the JC approach, he refers to the kib-

butzim spirit (e.g., in Kohlberg, 1980, 1985; see also Snarey and Samuelson this volume).

But a kibbutz, even with its concept of community education, does not ﬁt well into the

concept of the JC approach. A kibbutz is a total life-sharing enterprise with the purpose

of survival, with special conceptions of early childhood education, with income sharing,

and a special work and survival spirit—traits embedded after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War

in the growing of the state of Israel.

A JC is a school transformational concept of power sharing with children and ado-

lescents to learn how to become moral, to be socially engaged, work hard, and develop

civility. Here, work and money are not shared, but common norms and self-generated

rules are. The JC is a playground democracy, a place for learning and simulating a better

togetherness, and a change of the norm-genesis process normally done by the teacher

alone and now given to the whole community. A kibbutz, on the other hand, consists of

a higher degree of existential communitarian sharedness that includes work, child care,

religious belief, traditions and signs of passages but with less formal behavioral codes

such as those in a school. Nevertheless, the spirit of a kibbutz in its best form can inﬂu-

ence our teachers who engage in the JC approach.

THE JUST COMMUNITY APPROACH: A BRIEF HISTORY

The ﬁrst JC schools were founded by L. Kohlberg, E. Wassermann, E. Fenton, D. Speicher-

Dubin, and R. Mosher. The Cambridge Cluster School, Scarsdale Alternative School, and

Brookline High School (School within a School) were places where the idea ﬁrst received

fruition. The book edited by R. Mosher (1980) Moral Education is an important account

of these beginnings. While enacting his vision within schools, Kohlberg also chartered

the concept of the JC approach in prisons in Niantic and other correctional institutes

(Hickey & Scharf, 1980).

The second generation of JC schools guided primarily by Higgins and Power (Power

& Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008) continued Kohlberg’s work after his death. Additional JC

enterprises emerged that were connected to other reform tasks.

204 s F.K. Oser

Whereas in the USA some highly committed persons continue practicing the JC

approach, more commonly it has been incorporated into other approaches. For instance,

the Community of Caring school reform program that initially focused on risk preven-

tion broadened its scope to promoting the development of all students through school

culture change and an array of student activities including service learning.

(Oser, Althof, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008, p. 400)

The European version of the JC emerged in 1984 when Kohlberg and Higgins visited

Germany, and three JC schools in Nordrheine-Westfalia were founded by Oser and Lind

(Lind, 1987; Lind & Althof, 1992). In the 1990s, Switzerland started several just com-

munities within schools, often connected with other goals like conﬂict negotiation or

civic education (Luterbacher, 2009). In Germany, this has been expressed more recently

in efforts at democratic education (Edelstein & Fauser, 2001; see also Edelstein and

Krettenauer this volume).

ADDRESSING A PERCEIVED DEFICIT: KOHLBERG’S VISION OF

SCHOOLS

The just community approach founded by Kohlberg in the 1970s and 1980s (Kohlberg,

1985) is, as mentioned, an effort to reform a difﬁcult to change system—a whole school.

The beginning of such an expansive intention is felt a fundamental deﬁcit of school

functioning and also a deﬁcit with respect to the level of moral judgments, prosocial

actions, and moral-caring sensibilities of the individual members of such a community.

“Our ﬁrst two efforts at using the Dewey-Piaget democracy and Durkheimian col-

lective moral education, like the kibbutz experiment, focused heavily on remedial moral

education for pre-conventional adolescents and young adults” (Kohlberg, 1985, p. 44).

The word “remedial” is important: A just community school starts mostly with evid-

ence and stories of such things as students breaking rules, failing to help others, using

drugs, hurting peers, being unmotivated to study, etc. These events can be clustered into

the realms of morality, community-oriented values, politics, social issues, and systemic

issues—each demanding different reworking strategies. These events lead students to

a felt disequilibrium with respect to a caring and positive school climate. They feel a

missing state of shared community values and deep disappointment regarding a lack of

mutual respect between teachers and students and among students themselves. Even if

these negative experiences are often not measured through instruments (scales), prin-

cipals, teachers, school helpers, parents, and often students talk about them, feel them,

and indeed become seriously concerned about them. As the philosopher N. Hartmann

(1957) states, “Only negatively can humans get a notion of happiness” (p. 141). From a

teleological point of view, a JC system is an instrument for overcoming these deﬁcits.

From a deontological framing, however, it is of course an educational enterprise with

humanistic goals and values (Veugelers, 2011).

Kohlberg’s vision was, nevertheless, not directed at systemic change so much as it was

intended to stimulate development within each individual with respect to three funda-

mental goals, namely:

(a) to develop moral judgment through deliberative discourse whereby the contents

are not artiﬁcial but real-life or school dilemmas;

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 205

(b) to bridge moral judgment and moral agency;

of solidarity.

Although, Kohlberg’s 1985 article “The just community approach to moral education

in theory and practice” is a masterful foundation for a new reform stream with respect

to changing persons within a school, his analysis presents a limited vision focused solely

on moral education. To put it differently, the “just community” approach amounts

“solely,” in the view of John Dewey’s conception, as a means for moral education. I

would argue that the issue has to be reconsidered under the heading of what we call a

comprehensive domain-speciﬁc transformation of the person–system relationship.

Kohlberg (1985) begins by making it clear that most psychologists use a one-way

concept to transfer psychological theory into praxis, and this way can never be fully

functional. He states: “The one-way street model of relating theory to practice rests

on what I have called the ‘psychologist’s fallacy’, i.e., to believe that what is important

for developmental psychology research is what is important for practitioners in the

classroom” (p. 33), and, in his bottom-up approach, he explains why the teacher is

not just a facilitator of learning but “an advocate for certain moral content” (advocacy

approach). If the teacher shows high respect for the student, this allows a participatory

democracy in the classroom and, at the same time, advocates certain values without

being indoctrinative. The issue then is how to link justice to a small political com-

munity based on equal political rights. The notion of a community and the notion

of justice are brought together through the concept of collectivity within a commu-

nitarian context. However, this always entails a structure in which the teacher has a

double role; namely, to set conditions for participation and to participate (without a

pseudo-participatory attitude; see below). The importance of membership, the sense

of community, the primary negative sanctions of the group’s criticism, the basic trust

and the conﬂict between the solidarity of friends versus the solidarity toward the

community as a whole—these are all taken into newly developed phases of collective

norms, stages of collective normative values, stages of a sense of community-valuing,

and degrees of collectiveness of norms. Examples from one of the ﬁrst just community

schools, the Scarsdale Alternative School, help clarify aspects of what is called a moral

atmosphere, moral courage (civil disobedience), the difference between an immoral

behavior such as stealing (which concerns each student) and cheating (which concerns

mainly only one student and the respective teachers). What is especially interesting—

what happens often in democracies—is that a new rule (e.g., against cheating) is voted

in by unanimous agreement, but the enforcement of the new rule is decided upon with

extreme controversy. This construction of a moral atmosphere, which is by no means

just an emotional wellbeing factor but is instead a content-speciﬁc amount of intensity

of the collectiveness of norms, is apparent in the justiﬁcation structures within JC

meetings. In fact, this is a Durkheimian concept because of its discipline and socializa-

tion orientation (Durkheim, 1961).

Thus, to sum up:

In Just-Community school meetings students, teachers, staff-members and prin-

cipals come together on a regular basis in order to thoroughly discuss and demo-

cratically decide upon issues relevant to life in school—Special community projects

206 s F.K. Oser

are planned, conﬂict solutions are generated and rules and policies are established

that reﬂect shared norms and values of the school community.

(Oser et al., 2008, p. 395)

In a parliamentary way, a whole community decides together on: (a) rules that shape

their daily school-life; (b) goals for positive togetherness and high solidarity of all

members (on issues of a positive school climate and on prosocial engagements in the

school); (c) proposed solutions to conﬂicts, upholding rules, and rule enforcing pro-

cesses); and (d) special community programs. Participation is at the core of this search

for new moral and social learning directions and new school pathways, and, with the

belief that in participating in common decision making, students learn to be socially

competent ﬁrst and develop shared norms second (see Figure 12.1).

A NEW WORLD: THE CORE IDEA OF THE JC APPROACH

To ﬁnd out what happens beyond moral developmental or collective norm oriented tend-

encies in the Kohlbergian sense, we need to analyze the missing dimensions mentioned

above. The following account (edited for length) of a JC meeting at a middle-sized Swiss

school reveals these.

Figure 12.1 Example of a Voting Process in a Swiss Just Community Meeting (Photo taken by W. Althof).

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 207

It is Monday, 11 o’clock. More than 300 persons (all the secondary students in grades 7

to 9, all the teachers, all the staff members) come together to decide a very difﬁcult case:

Three times the last week, somebody entered the girls’ restrooms, dirtied them terribly,

and destroyed whatever could be destroyed, leaving the restrooms smelling awful. In the

ﬁrst meeting, the planning committee presented the case. Many of the female students

stood up and expressed feelings of indignation, injustice, and mistrust—sometimes

along with some very embarrassing facts. There followed a general discussion in which

many hypothesized about who could do such a terrible thing: someone from inside the

school or someone from outside the school.

Many of the students wanted to say something about their understanding of the

case: for example, “this is certainly a person who is frustrated about the school as a

whole”; “this person must be punished harshly”; or “we need a new rule of observa-

tion.” One boy offered to let the girls use the boys’ restroom on the ﬁrst ﬂoor until the

girls’ restroom was repaired; the boys would use the restroom in the basement. After-

wards, the planning committee presented three solution proposals: ﬁrst, install a hidden

camera so that the “criminal” could be caught; second, students from the upper

classes—taking turns—would go through the corridors every 15 minutes with an

alarm clock looking for possible perpetrators; and third, there would be a huge ﬂyer in

front of the restrooms saying with huge letters, “Don’t do this again. You hurt people.”

Then students formed into small groups in the big hall and intensely discussed the

propositions. Some developed propositions such as engaging a policeman or father of

one of the students who had time to look at things. Another proposition was just to

trust that the wrongdoer, probably an upper classman, would have an insight that this

was a misguided approach for getting rid of frustration. Then the students came back

to the mean assembly, and a representative of each group argued for one or another

solution. After a long discussion, the planning committee proposed progressive solutions

in four steps: ﬁrst a ﬂyer; second a hidden camera; third student control; and fourth

police control. After a ﬁnal serious discussion of pros and cons, the meeting came to an

end with a vote. By a tiny majority, the planning committee accepted proposition

three—the ﬂyer in front of the restroom.

At the end, the school principal gave a small, convincing talk saying that this school

is a “good school,” not only because it has a good climate, good teachers, and wonderful

students, but also because this school brings things out in the open and solves problems

itself. Afterwards teacher and student groups stood around the main ﬂoor of the school

and discussed the issue. The teachers were especially involved deeply in self-criticism,

fearing that a negative light would be shed on the school. In a teachers’ meeting later in

the afternoon, some teachers criticized the solution that was adopted. The principal

defended the outcome from the position that to make things open and let the students

participate in an open discourse is better than hiding things because the students learn

to see what accountability means. Then the principal, a very clever woman, invited a

journalist to the school and asked him to write about such a wonderful democratic

school where the students take on high responsibility, etc. Only one father, a lawyer,

tried to bother the principal afterwards. All in all, after posting the agreed-upon ﬂyer,

there was no more dirtying of the girls’ restrooms.

Althof (2008) reports that many teachers and parents—but also principals and educa-

tional politicians—ask if it would be necessary to spend so much time and the energy

208 s F.K. Oser

of so many people to resolve a case like this. He also reports that many parents feared

that students cannot really take responsibility for such situations, that they suffer from

them, or that the burden would be too high for them. Some teachers also had the

opinion that the school principal should regulate such problems. We call this “a regula-

tion syndrome.”

Looking from an educational standpoint, it is obvious that very interesting and inten-

sive learning processes were at stake here. To name some:

s !SCHOOLWIDEORGANIZATIONATATIMEDURINGTHEWEEKWHENEVERYBODYHASTOLEAVE

the classroom and to be at this “agora.”

s !CASEISMADEPUBLICWITHINANDONLYWITHINTHECLEARBORDERSOFASYSTEMSO

that everybody in the system shares the same knowledge and concerns.

s 4HEREISPUBLICDEBATEINWHICHEVERYONECANMAKESUGGESTIONSTAKEASTANCEAND

share the indignation.

s 4HEREISCONCERNEXPRESSEDABOUTRESPECTFULTREATMENTOFGIRLS

s 4HEREISAPPARENTLYAMIXTUREOFARGUMENTATIONLEVELSORSTAGESTHATSTIMULATESTHE

next higher stage.

s 4HEREISALOBBYINGMODETHATCONSISTSOFCONVINCINGOTHERSFROMTHEIROWNCON-

victions.

s 4HEPREPARATIONGROUPHASAPROCESSEMPLOYINGPARLIAMENTARYSOLUTIONSTHATHAVE

to be analyzed and valued, ﬁrst in small groups and then in full parliament.

s 4HEREIS VOTINGPREPARATIONAND APROCESSINWHICH THERESULT ISTAKENSERIOUSLY

even if “philosopher kings” would never accept this solution.

s -OST OF THE TIME THE MINORITY VOTERS ACCEPT THE MAJORITY DECISION BUT THE

majority learns to respect the opinion of the minority.

s "ECAUSEALL MEMBERSOFTHE SCHOOLMAKETHEDECISIONRESPONSIBILITYAND IMPLE-

mentation are shared.

s 4HISLEADSTOWHATWECALLhSYSTEMIDENTITYvIMPORTANTALSOFORWORKPLACESINSTI-

tutes, and similar organizations.

These elements show that a JC school operates in a concrete situation, in a speciﬁc time

frame, with a concrete problem to solve, and with a sense of necessity for morally prob-

lematic issues. Although these elements are initially described above without having been

framed by theory, we can begin by taking them into consideration in order to understand

what happens in a more comprehensive manner. We stated that the JC approach is missing

(a) a theory of civic education, (b) a theory of school functioning, (c) a theory of social

beliefs and social learning, and (d) a theory of complex morality. These would be con-

sidered alongside the Kohlberg-introduced functions of stimulating moral development

and the enhancement of community-related convictions and social bonding.

THE MISSING ELEMENTS

Civic Education and a View of the Whole School

In the above account of a JC meeting, the political and civic dimensions of a meeting

become obvious. On one hand, the democracy becomes visible (one person, one vote).

On the other hand, students experience and come to understand the consequences of

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 209

public opinion produced by a process (they participate in a public decision-making

process, participate in a voting process, and accept and submit themselves to a majority/

minority situation). These are civic issues, not primarily moral-domain issues. Ques-

tions of freedom to speak while having respect for others, learning political tolerance,

and being aware of the power of the preparation group are political issues. In addition,

students learn how helpless and impotent we are in the face of heavy and populist argu-

ments, how much we feel misunderstood if we think that someone is lobbying behind

our backs, how decisions of the leading group can be manipulated and nondemocratic,

and how to be “neutral” in developing and deciding upon a new rule. The learning of

politics thus is embedded in the empowerment of each school member, and the whole

system to trust the reason and legitimating capacity of each student and teacher.

“Politics” here has several meanings: to inﬂuence the power structure of a system,

to argue freely, to understand the process of rule genesis, and to decide by voting or to

elect freely in a participative process. And “civic” means to participate in a political com-

munity. “Certainly such participation entails interaction with the state (school) and its

institutions, but it also includes activities undertaken with fellow community members

about matters of shared concern” (Rogers, Mediratta, & Shah, 2012, p. 44). Here students

learn to understand that a community, besides consisting of shared feelings and atmo-

sphere, is ﬁrst of all a system of rules and a sharing of ruling (Gutmann, 1987; Moses &

Saenz, 2012). Again, this does not touch on morality directly—only indirectly, like every

act in human life.

The school-theoretical perspective is completely different. The school, as a system

within a bigger, regulative system of a state, has its own basic and educationally jus-

tiﬁable structure. Because the school is totally coercive (a student must learn a given

curriculum, must do homework, must behave according to rules, must listen to a teacher,

etc.), and even if all its “musts” are subordinate to a positive human respect, this coer-

civeness cannot be overlooked or even destroyed. Because the functions of every school

in the world are (a) to build knowledge, (b) to test and select students according to their

competencies, (c) to allocate life resources, and (e) socialize students into the adult life

(see Fend, 2007), it is obvious that the basic functions of schools cannot be subordinated

to the JC approach. It rather must be taken into a socially supporting body of mutually

supporting individuals within this mentioned coercive structure. Kohlberg did not have

many sociologically relevant reﬂections about the school as a system. His idea was that

development to higher stages and shared norms were the basic elements for changing a

school. We believe that this idea is a very important part of the JC approach, but it is not

all. There are two more elements: First, we must consider the conditions for a school-

system change toward a JC approach, and, second, we have to ask how students of dif-

ferent ages conceive of their school as a system.

On a ﬁrst point, consider the work of Leithwood, Harris, & Strauss (2010) titled

Leading School Turnaround. It is a top-down concept in which, inﬂuenced by the cor-

porate world, the basic goal is to dismiss weak teachers in order to enhance math and

reading performances, to control children, and to implement rules and enforce them. In

order to prevent schools from failing, turnaround leaders support the high performance

of teachers, and try to stimulate the success reﬂections on their colleagues’ professional

skills and knowledge. They model desirable practices; redesign schools according to dis-

cipline and respect of others; and buffer staff change across ﬁt-in-criteria. The respec-

tive strategies are: building productive relationships, building achievement targets, and

210 s F.K. Oser

getting funds for evaluation in order to ﬁt the school into the highest national bench-

marks. Even without considering competition, single incentives, and sanctions, we ﬁnd

a similar approach in Darling-Hammonds’ concept of educational reform with the ele-

ments: standards of assessment, systemic thinking, instructional quality, creation of col-

legial incentives, and external revisions (Darling-Hammond, 2012).

A different concept is taken in other books like School Effectiveness for Whom (Slee,

Weiner, & Tomlinson, 1998), and here at least a positive criticism prevails. The editors

say in the beginning:

We maintain that while reporting to be inclusive and comprehensive, school effec-

tiveness research is riddled with errors: it is excluding (of children with special needs,

black boys, so-called clever girls), it is normative and regulatory (operating mainly

within narrow sets of performance indicators), it is bureaucratic and disempow-

ering. It focuses exclusively on the processes and internal constructs of schooling,

apparently disconnected from educations’ social end—adulthood. School effective-

ness seems to be neither interested nor very effective in preparing children for cit-

izenship, parenthood or work.

(p. 5)

Of course these are two extreme conceptions (one showing a full top-down approach,

the other referring to criticism with respect to one-sided reforms), but they are helpful

for locating what we mean by carrying out a reform like the JC approach from the

bottom up. The self-governing style of a JC school is somehow much more complex,

human, and fragile. On one hand, we refer to the empowerment of the children’s

embeddedness in a just community that is not only well felt but also oriented to just

decision making. This has to do with the parliamentary part of the JC approach. Of

course, in the JC schools, effectiveness in academics is also related to the moral and

social climate. In an environment where children and adolescents protect each other,

learning becomes meaningful and purposeful.

We cannot cite research on how students of different ages conceive of systems like

schools, states, ﬁrms, etc. From our own research, we know that for an eight-year-old

child, the system is seen as the persons in it: The school principal is the system; the

teacher and a few kids are the system—thus expressing close relationships or powerful

positions. For children of this age, the system is what they see. For an adolescent, the

system renders you helpless because they do not understand how and why power is there.

Adolescents test the system (for example, by breaking rules) in order get a sense of it, to

test the power, and to ﬁnd limits. Young adults, however, see the system as a necessary

instrument to keep control. For them, only through the system can humans guarantee

justice, trust, and security. They functionalize the system (see Biedermann & Oser, 2010).

As stated above, there is no developmental research on students’ conceptions of the func-

tion of the schools in society. However, our hypothesis is that in a JC school the develop-

ment with respect to such issues is more successful than in normal state schools.

A Theory of Social Beliefs and Complex Morality

The third element in my listing of components missing from accounts of the JC is the

lack of a theory of social beliefs and social learning. In every school, these processes are

obvious. Students and teachers are interacting, communicating, playing, working, and

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 211

often celebrating together. Students are asking for help, looking for friendship, and are

keen on being accepted and socially involved. They are involved in daily discourses and

conﬂict management and its respective solutions—all of which is embedded in automa-

tized symbolic activities. A JC approach thus cannot exist without understanding these

basic social processes. They are inextricably embedded in an already present ocean of

billions of interactive actions and reactions. In many studies, Nucci and his group (see

Nucci, 2001, 2009; Nucci & Powers this volume) convinced us that the development of

concepts about societal convention and social sensitivity are distinct aspects of human

development that should be distinguished from the moral domain. Whereas the soci-

etal domain and norms of social convention consists of unnecessary duties according to

Kant, the moral domain is ﬁxed and much less ﬂexible. In one of our studies, we report

that parents discuss moral aspects much less than social aspects or personal issues (see

Oser, Hattersley, & Spychiger, 2008). The reason for this rests in the absolute necessity of

the fairness norms compared to only a wished-for necessity of social engagement. In the

story of a JC meeting presented above, social issues come up when a boy offered the boys’

restroom on one ﬂoor of the building. Social aspects are shown with respect to dignity

for human intimacy, and, of course, social aspects involve taking the role of others in the

given situation.

When we state that we should offer a more complex moral theory, we mean that more

than stages of moral judgment should be our concern. We should also attend to the

interactions of morality with societal conventions and personal considerations (Nucci,

2001, 2009), and also take into account moral memory, moral sensibility, moral central-

ity, moral motivation, moral rule enforcement, moral respect, and, thus, well justiﬁed

moral acts (on this complexity, see Heinrichs, Oser, & Lovat, 2013).

Functional Conditions: Minimal Elements of a Transparent JC Structure

The enterprise of building a JC school entails the following steps and conditions. In

addition this process requires extensive engagement with outside experts trained in the

development of the JC within schools.

CONVINCING THE STAFF

The school principal and all the teachers must be convinced of the value and effec-

tiveness of the approach. This requires introductions to theoretical information, and

workshops on the model in all its facets. The work of convincing the staff is difﬁ-

cult, but without their compliance there is little reason to attempt engagement in the

program. The most difﬁcult part is that teachers have to learn that every negative

event is fertile ground for a positive outcome. Without learning from negative events,

as the above example of the restrooms illustrates, no progress is possible. We have

needed at minimum four days of workshops with teachers and principals before they

would agree to participate in forming a JC school. In one case, I convinced the teach-

ers who voted unanimously to adopt the project. However, the principal did not want

it in his school, and the project failed. Such rejection is generally attributable to the

program requirements for teachers and staff that appear to be impositions upon the

existing way the school is run.

Generally the model is initiated and implemented by the principal and the community

of teachers and, like a well-organized squall, imposed upon and applied to the students.

In other words, the ﬁrst step is almost never a democratic act.

212 s F.K. Oser

The basic structure for a JC community is depicted in Figure 12.2. To implement this

structure entails an external analysis of the best way of introducing it and a study of the

consequences of each step. What is most important is that the system maintains its basic

equilibrium and that a lot of coordination is done, structurally and informally.

This central element of the ﬁgure contains a community meeting that represents the

parliamentary ring for all important decision making. This ring has many necessary ele-

ments such as a mix of different student groups, and the physical distribution of teachers

such that they do not sit together. There are also some basic rules presented by teachers

that establish norms for discussion: for example, not applauding statements of other

students, not hurting others by overly criticizing their statements, and listening well to

prevent repeating stated positions.

PREPARATION

The second central element is the preparation group that also functions as an agenda

committee. Its task is to structure the meeting so that every proposition is directed to an

action decision to ensure that issues are resolved and that everyone is quickly informed.

This is accomplished by insuring that the central problem is visualized (sometimes

through a play or a ﬁlm sequence), that the agenda is transparent, and that the voting

procedure is just. Membership on this committee is representative of each class and the

group has a short term of ofﬁce.

Fairness committee

Community meeting

Supervision and

teacher training

Information to parents

Scientific evaluation

Dilemma discussion in

the classroom

Preparation groups

Advisory groups

Agenda committee

Teacher training

Figure 12.2 Minimal Elements of the JC Approach (source: adapted from Oser & Althof, 1992, p. 365).

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 213

THE FAIRNESS COMMITTEE

The third central element is called the friendship or fairness committee. Its task is to

deal with all cases of discipline and violations of rules. Members of this committee are

elected by the community meeting on the basis of their status as persons displaying trust

and fairness. Their tasks are to articulate important school problems and refer them to

the preparation group, and most importantly to serve as a friendly court when members

of the community do not stick to rules and commitments. This committee bridges the

judgment–action gap in every domain: social, moral, personal, and civic.

DISCUSSION PROCEDURES

Generally, following a just community plenary meeting, it is highly desirable to share

outcomes with involved teachers and elicit any differences in conceptions of action dir-

ections taken within the meeting. A mentor of the JC approach would generally frame

the discussion within theoretical elements of the developmental educational theories

that guide JC structures and activities. It may also be useful to bring in additional theor-

etical frames. For example, after introducing the concept of helping behavior in dif-

ferent situations, it may be of relevance to discuss some of the following: a theory of

social development (Selman, 1980), self-efﬁcacy belief (Bandura, 2000), social purpose

(Damon, 2008), moral necessity theory (Oser & Heinzer, 2010), or the learned helpless-

ness syndrome (Seligman, 1975).

In addition to the structural elements just described the JC approach impacts

discourse more broadly across the curriculum. Classroom intervention procedures

(dilemma and value discussion, moral storytelling, moral sensibility training or other

character education approaches, and conﬂict mediation on the level of students in the

classroom) may have a special didactical focus and be measured separately from the JC

meetings. The effect of such classroom moral-education work inﬂuences the overall

JC approach.

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Providing information to parents is central to success of the JC school. Parents must

come to understand that the JC approach is, on one hand, a goal in itself (to develop

moral, social, and civic competences in students) and on the other hand, contributes

to a climate for better academic school performance. However, parents are not direct

participants in the JC activities within the school. Their role is as supporters or friendly

external helpers.

SHARED VALUES, SHARED NORMS

Understanding what happens beyond the classroom to changes within the school at large

leads to questions regarding how norms and values are perceived of as components of

the JC approach. There are two ways in which this issue is relevant to conceptualizing the

impact of the JC school. First, is the impact this approach has on the developmental level

of students’ understandings of the norms; and second is the communal basis of norms,

the so-called sharedness of norms.

Early in the history of the JC approach Reimer and Power (1980) proposed a series of

seven phases of collective norms ranging from an absence of common norms to broad

acceptance and commitment to collective norms among students to account for shifts

they perceived as resulting from the institution of the JC. These phases representing

214 s F.K. Oser

developmental shifts in the collective moral orientation of students were reported to

be associated within the Cluster School to such behavioral issues as respect for prop-

erty, drug usage, and school attendance. Reimer and Power (1980) reported that as with

individual moral stage development, most JC clusters stayed within midlevel phases of

development (see also Power & Higgins-D’Allessandro, 2008). Thus, without blaming

the staff, the teachers, or the principal the authors state:

Community, especially democratic community, represents a social ideal. Few in our

culture have grown up or been educated for living in community. We may have a

vision of what the ideal should entail, but when we move to realize the vision in a

particular social context, we discover that neither vision nor commitment alone can

create a community.

And later they state:

As soon as educators move from teaching about values of democratic and com-

munal living to trying to realize these values in a social world, they become involved

in developing new patterns of action for which there are few available models in

either the students’ or the educators’ experience.

(Reimer & Power, 1980, p. 319)

The authors probably did not see it this way, but what emerged from their work was the

creation of a new social psychological paradigm for thinking about school community.

If one reviews the literature on the social climate of schools, one ﬁnds a series of scales

on affective ties to the community: perceived sense of community connectedness (Flan-

agan, Gallay, Gill, Galleay, & Nti, 2005), sense of happiness (Seligman, 2002), trust in a

particular system (Levi & Stocker, 2000), or similar ties. In the Handbook on Educa-

tional Psychology of 2008, Götz, Frenzel, and Pekrun (2008) present the social climate as

school, class, or educational norm integration with the aspects of (a) social and per-

formance pressure, (b) student centrality, (c) cohesion, and (d) discipline.

In contrast with these affective approaches Reimer and Power dealt with the concrete

content of what deﬁnes the community—a set of norms that must be accepted internally

by the individual and, in addition, must be bought into and accepted by the group as a

whole. This concept is quite novel, and it is also less connected to Kohlberg’s construct

of formal morality. In this tradition, we ﬁnd a similar frame to the one Korte (1987)

developed from the work of Power. In a more developmental context, stages are related

to Kohlberg’s tradition and are interpreted with respect to the group-life and the respec-

tive group cohesion. A person at stage 2 does not value group life; a person between

stages 2 and 3 sees the group as an organization; a person between stages 3 and 4 values

the quality of the relationship in the group and a person at stage 4 values the cohesion of

the group and values the group as a unit which takes part in a society.

In sum, one central goal within a JC approach is to develop shared norms and values.

The process of its genesis is not an easy thing. The process goes through controversial

discussion, important decision making, and, later, reinforcing what is decided in the

context of the whole school. Finally, this work has resulted in excellent measurement

instruments oriented to content, phases, and stages for the understanding of growth

with respect to this goal (see Power & Higgins-D’Allesandro, 2008).

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 215

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PARTICIPATION

Discussions of participation usually carry positive connotations because it is believed

that participation: (a) reﬂects a democratic principle, (b) motivates engagement, (c) dis-

tributes responsibility, and, ﬁnally, (d) produces identiﬁcation with the respective system

and its actions (working, learning, or deciding). A JC is a system in which participation

around certain issues is granted but controlled. This is a very important restriction. Even

if interpreted positively, it is not the same thing to participate in a JC meeting as it is to

participate in common things such as the owning of a house or the running of a ﬁrm.

Moreover, we tend to be too superﬁcial when speaking about what participation really

means. To illustrate, consider the participation involved in voting on an important issue

facing a community or nation, such as is done in Switzerland’s direct democracy system.

Even here, only a minority of citizens ends up going to the polls most of the time. Can

we conclude from this that the majority who did not vote are not participants in a demo-

cratic community? Before drawing parallels to the JC, however, it is necessary to make

some important differentiations.

In the “playground democracy” of a JC system, students and the plenary meeting

can only decide on a few issues that affect all or most of the community. Examples of

such issues include: the moral atmosphere of the school, prosocial engagement (e.g.,

helping, caring, and sharing behaviors), behavior and discipline rules, signs of trust and

trustworthiness, distribution of playground use, consequences of immoral and unjust

behavior, and issues in a similar vein. Other decisive issues of the school rest in the hand

of the principal, the teachers, or the administrators. In normative terms, the more cases

of particular issues being discussed and decided upon in a JC meeting, the greater the

attractiveness and deeper the shared interest in these issues become.

Oser and Spychiger (2005) and Althof (2008) were among the ﬁrst to introduce the

JC approach into secondary 1 (middle school) and primary classes (third to six grades).

From this experience, Althof stressed that student learning occurs through participation

experiences that include two necessary elements. The ﬁrst is that students must be aware

that things begin to be much harder after every student-based group decision than if the

teacher had made the decision. He states: “The essential work, however, only began with

the decision. Potential problems had to be considered like who could be bothered by

what?”(Althof, 2008, p. 146). The second learning component accompanying recogni-

tion of the responsibility for carrying out the precepts and enduring the consequences of

decisions is the actual activity of these participation experiences. Students’ social, polit-

ical, moral, and civic learning gets stimulated through doing.

As in the case of a national democracy, not all students participate in JC meetings

with the same intensity. Relying on Milbrath (1972), we can compare political activ-

ity with a Roman cirque in which some persons are gladiators, others organizers,

and others rule guardians —yet, most of the people are spectators (see Reichenbach,

2000). Even the persons who refuse to participate are thereby expressing disaffection

and are, nonetheless, politically involved. Only the small group of apathetic persons,

the ones who never participate in any political discourse whatsoever, are problematic

because they hand away decisions to people that do not represent their interests. A few

years ago we developed a hierarchy of participatory validity. Figure 12.3 presents its

basic features. As shown, full participation with total sharing of responsibility seldom

occurs.

216 s F.K. Oser

In a JC setting, students must accept that although the range of responsibility is small the

decisions made have major consequences. This is why taking a full role with responsibil-

ities in such settings is a central issue. In contrast “pseudo-participation” is what students

mostly experience in educational settings. Typically, parents say to their children: “Listen,

we must talk to each other” or “We must discuss with each other.” These sorts of statements

are, in fact, a hidden way of providing parental directives. Thus, in a JC setting the most

important consideration is that whatever kind of decision is made through student delib-

erations (within a framework of fairness) must be honored by the teachers and enacted.

What then is the educational effectiveness of JC participation with respect to transfer

beyond the school setting? Does someone who participates in a JC school also participate

in community service activities or become actively involved in dealing with civic and

political issues? The answer is no. In general, we expect too many positive effects to come

from just the fact that someone participates, period. There is no correlation between

political activity and activity in a different domain. Biedermann (2006) in his disserta-

tion and my colleagues and I in similar research projects (Oser & Spychiger, 2005) found,

for example, that social work activities do not correlate with political activities. (For an

alternative perspective see Hart, Matsuba, & Atkins this volume.)

Participation hierarchy

Total participation

(completely shared responsibility)

Participation in a specific area

(participation islands)

Partial participation in operational islands

(integrated responsibility)

Indirect participation I:

responsibility for a task

Indirect participation II:

responsibility for friendliness

Indirect participation III:

rank and file

Pseudo-participation

Figure 12.3 Levels of Participation: a Participation Hierarchy (source: adapted from Biedermann & Oser, 2006, p. 35; in

Biedermann & Oser, 2010).

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 217

THE TEACHERS’ ROLE

Every JC endeavor begins with an intensive knowledge- and action-based workshop.

From there, teachers learn about the function, goals, and methods of the whole approach.

They see ﬁlm vignettes about other schools having been through the same intellectual

and educational journey by seeing examples of JC meetings, teacher discussions, what

the principals do, and how they engage their schools. Through the workshops, these

teachers also learn about the concepts of participation, authenticity, and that, by losing

authority, they actually win student respect and esteem. However, the most unfamiliar

things that teachers need to know are evidence-based information about (a) the concept

of “Development as the Aim of Education” (Kohlberg, 1981), (b) the concept of the

process of parliamentary course of a JC meeting, and (c) the reference view of dealing

with the negative behavior of students, which means not to measure the results of the

processes of a JC prematurely before learning the way in which it is implemented and

functions. Teachers thus need two central inputs, namely: 1) to see education as ped-

agogical presupposition, the most important common vision; and 2) to develop shared

collective pedagogical norms among JC colleagues as a necessary reset of their own ped-

agogical thinking. These two central interventions for teachers are further deﬁned and

explained below.

A Pedagogical Presupposition

We call this educational power “trust in advance.” It is a central and archetypical ped-

agogical practice, treated in many different theoretical concepts such as Vygotsky’s

“zone of proximal development” or Turiel’s “plus 1-convention” or Garz’s (1989) and

Aufenanger’s (1989) pedagogical presupposition. It consists in the belief that educators

and teachers have to act as if the child or the learner already can do something or knows

something or has already experienced something. They do this knowing full well that it is

not the case. A good example is a young mother talking to her baby as if it were an adult,

knowing that the child cannot speak and does not fully understand what she is saying.

Giving responsibility to students in a JC meeting is another example: The student gets

power, and we believe and act as if he or she knows how to deal with it. The reason chil-

dren and adolescents learn or develop higher moral judgment or participate fully is pre-

cisely because the teachers do believe and are totally convinced that they can do it. This

is of course, psychologically speaking, a form of expectation effect. It works in the sense

of a self-fulﬁlling prophecy, meaning that teachers bring about students’ participation,

responsibility, and caring, etc. by presupposing that they have the ability. Not presup-

posing this results in students without belief in themselves, without motivation, without

care, and without responsibility. Although it is perhaps an unwelcomed imposition on

teachers, they must learn to presuppose and believe that all of what has to be learned

later is possible for the learners. That is, they must trust in advance.

Shared Collective Norms Among JC Colleagues

We have already discussed the notion of shared norms among students within the JC

(Power, 1979). A totally different construct refers to what we call “shared norms of teach-

ers.” Wehrlin (2009) looked at what a shared norm of teachers really can be. She found

that a shared norm is not just a statistical mean of the acceptance of a rule. It is what we

call the intensity of a teacher’s belief—that another teacher holds the same pedagogical

218 s F.K. Oser

belief and that the respective norm behind the belief is as important to the other teacher

as it is to the self. “Shared” means a mechanism of how teachers shape each other’s

reasoning about what should be kept as a steering maxim for the school. The begin-

ning of questioning of what we call a shared norm is always a social event that affects

every teacher in a school. The professional members of a group demonstrate, through

a common judging procedure, that they hold as important the same methods, or the

same envisioned results. Wehrlin (2009) compared six teacher teams with respect to the

scales “teachers’ social climate,” “teachers’ cooperation,” “felt common professional self-

efﬁcacy,” and “professional satisfaction.” She found (a) that schools differ enormously

and (b) that technical and content-speciﬁc sharedness is signiﬁcantly higher than educa-

tional sharedness. In addition, she demonstrated that the more a school is affected with

discipline or learning problems, the higher teachers’ cooperation is. Shared cooperation

norms also lead to higher collective self-efﬁcacy, but not to individual self-efﬁcacy. Higher

general cooperation norms also lead to higher professional satisfaction. All this is a sign

for what Althof and Oser found with respect to teachers’ engagement in a JC project,

namely that, even though they work harder and longer workdays, they feel signiﬁcantly

more supported by the principal and by their colleagues, need less formal authority, have

more time for informal discussions with students, see more positive relationships among

students, show higher trust in students, and have to engage less in conﬂicts between

students.

In summary, besides the theoretical and practical knowledge and all the didactical

developmental competences a founding teacher group must have, trust in advance and

shared pedagogical norms are core elements for the functioning of a JC school (see also

Murrell, Diez, Feinamn-Nemser, & Schussler, 2010).

SOME RESEARCH RESULTS

Having provided a framework for understanding the JC, let’s turn now to some repre-

sentative research results. In an initial study, Kohlberg (1985) contrasted three traditional

schools (Brookline, Cambridge, Scarsdale) with their JC counterparts. Independent vari-

ables were perceived prosocial choice, prosocial behavior, degree of collectiveness, mean

stage of collective norms, and mean phase of collective norms. In all these dimensions,

the project schools obtained signiﬁcantly higher scores.

However, a recently completed research report on a secondary 1 (middle school) JS

school in Switzerland (see Luterbacher & Oser, 2013) makes it clear that contemporary

applications of the JC face a formidable challenge. Schools are less likely to engage for

a full three years in such an enterprise. Instead, they tend to treat a JC project as one

of many school “reforms” and generally expect immediate, signiﬁcant change from

a few school meetings. The school in our study had only six school meetings a year.

However, the teachers, even those very well guided in workshops and discussions, did

not wait to observe for long-term educational effects. They expected rapid change and

control of all problems of the school (e.g., vandalism, tardiness, boys’ disrespect toward

girls). The result was that, from the 17 scales used for measuring student participa-

tion, social climate, and personality development such as self-efﬁcacy, belief, and trust

in advance, only a few elicited signiﬁcant change compared with the control group.

Thus, we found signiﬁcant teacher effects on shared values, student effects on a more

critical discourse orientation, less group pressure, and more community orientation.

A Theory of the Just Community Approach s 219

However, there were also negative effects such as attitude toward critical thinking, lack

of moral sensitivity, lack of perspective taking, and poor sensitivity toward the justice

motive.

We interpret this negative effect to so-called sensibility shock, which refers to the fact

that, through pedagogical stimulation, the repeated measure may no longer be valid. For

example, if we ask students in a pretest about the amount of participation in school deci-

sion making, we will get a score at a middle level. When we introduce the JC approach

with many participative decision-making meetings, the students begin to be aware of

what real participation means. In this case, they began to estimate their participation

possibility as much less intensive. This effect often appears when a new approach is intro-

duced that brings awareness to what is implicitly there but not yet consciously realized.

A third reason for such weak effects is the choice of instruments. Inﬂuenced by person-

ality measures of so many large-scale comparison studies like ICCS, TEDs, IGLU, PISA,

we forgot the beautiful work of the Kohlberg group in using instruments with much

higher-ﬁtting validity. As mentioned in his 1985 article, when Kohlberg compared tradi-

tional schools with JC schools, no personality traits were measured, only the frequency

of perceived prosocial choice for others, the frequency of predicted prosocial behavior of

others, the modal degree of moral collectiveness, the mean stage of collective norms, and

a kind of mean-phase of shared norms. These variables captured the intervention more

accurately than constructs we included such as constructivism versus instructionism,

openness toward reform, or moral courage.

TOWARD A THEORY OF A JUST COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Despite a long experience with the JC movement, we still are lacking a “just community

theory.” After so many studies and so many reported practical experiences, perhaps we

can suggest what is needed to construct one. First, we need a vision of school that is

socially, morally, and democratically of high quality. Schools are mostly evaluated and

judged by achievement performances, even though this is a secondary consideration for

a JC vision. Second, we need an understanding of how children and adolescents perceive

systems like schools, and continued research on how they develop morally, politically,

socially, and religiously, and the probable conditions for such sensitive changes. Third,

more speciﬁcally, we need more knowledge about the phases of a JC meeting. Although

we have made progress in identifying JC meeting phases and processes they have not

been systematically investigated. Research on these variables is central for understand-

ing the JC and its impact. Fourth, we need systematic professional development of the

above described competence proﬁles of the staff and, herein, the development of belief in

“trust in advance” and in shared professional norms. Fifth, we need systemic multi-level

measurement of all important aspects mentioned in this paper (e.g., elements of justice,

civics, morality, strategic and nonstrategic discourse; school-based system elements: par-

ticipation-oriented caring and prosocial acts on both sides—teachers and students). The

moral-atmosphere questionnaire developed by Power and Higgins-D’Alessandro (2008,

pp. 241–244) is a ﬁrst step. However, future work aims for developing a measure for

democracy (participation and transformation that is moral, social, and civic) that can be

used to capture its quality in any school. This will lead to learning more about an authen-

tic stimulation of the good. There is a lack of measures in many JC ﬁelds; for example,

there is not yet evidence with respect to the parallelism of changes in the domains within

220 s F.K. Oser

the JC approach. Since the implementation of a JC is a controlled intervention, we also

should measure the positive (or inhibiting) inﬂuence of social, moral, and civic growth

on academic performances in general. And ﬁnally, we should acquire knowledge of how

the JC approach in its many facets works as an inclusive power for each single child and

each staff member (see Biesta, 2009).

These ﬁve areas can form the basis for a theory of a “just community.” In addition, the

school administrators and staff being hierarchically organized must learn that growth

in morality and caring is a long-term project and that changes in students’ social and

moral sensibility means engaging fully in what can be called a bottom-up concept. A JC

is not a problem-solving think-tank. Instead, it uses problems and the so-called “social

waste” of each school for long-term change and long-term development of its socio-

moral climate and management. Teachers must learn that the beginning and ongoing

processes of the JC approach are always responses to negative events (Oser & Spychiger,

2005). Janusz Korczak (1967) states it like this: “A child who never stole, lied, did unjust

things, misbehaved can never become a moral person”; this is a key to the JC approach.

And one day, we may learn even how much of it, in which situations, is necessary. Thus,

in a JC school, the negative is the fruitful soil for the growth of civic, caring, and moral

persons. At the core of a JC school is the question of how we want to see each other and

how we want our school to be, precisely in the face of the negative aspects that have been

discussed. Here the turnaround concept is different from that of a classical turnaround

school; here developmental moral and social discipline become a basis for the academic

learning discipline, and not vice versa. The theory of “development as the aim of a com-

munity” implicitly means that knowledge building and immediate growth, like learning

mathematics, are not the key motor for change. Development is the result of intensive

and often repeated community discourse and the resulting service-learning of students

in the school.

Last but not least, we should not forget the contribution the JC approach makes toward

students’ development of civility. Because the Kohlberg tradition emphasized movement

toward principled morality, the contribution of convention to social life was miscast as

an inferior form of morality (see Nucci, 2001, 2009). Civility is the coordination of an

appreciation of the role of convention for directing our interactions as members of a

particular social group with our moral valuation of persons as worthy of respect. Thus,

such things as the use of polite language and the everyday small acts of kindness such as

holding the door open for someone or giving up a seat to an elderly person are aspects

of social life deﬁned by the conventions of each community, but that nonetheless con-

tribute to the overall morality of social existence. Participation within a JC is quintes-

sentially an experience in civility.

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223

CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION

Cultivating Ethical Development through Mindfulness Training

Robert W. Roeser, David R. Vago, Cristi Pinela, Laurel S. Morris,

Cynthia Taylor, and Jessica Harrison

Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.

David Whyte

DEFINING CONTEMPLATIVE EDUCATION

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce Contemplative Education—an emerging,

practical, and applied scientiﬁc approach to the cultivation of positive mental skills and

social-emotional dispositions that we hypothesize are relevant to individuals’ ethical

development. (Mind and Life Educational Research Network [MLERN], 2012; Roeser &

Peck, 2009). The key question of this chapter is how might developmentally appropriate

secular mindfulness training contribute to the ethical development of young people and

their parents and teachers?

Contemplative, from the Latin root contemplatio, refers to the marking out of a space

for the cultivation of attentiveness to the fullness of life—including oneself, other people,

and the sociocultural and natural worlds (Zajonc, in press). Education, from the Latin

root educare, can be deﬁned as the “drawing forth” of children’s intrinsic potentials—

somatic, emotional, imaginative, cognitive, and attentional in nature—and the guiding

of these qualities towards fruitful personal and societal ends (Dewey, 1900). Given these

etymologies, we can say that as an applied, practical approach, Contemplative Educa-

tion (CE) aims to draw forth and cultivate children’s intrinsic self-regulatory skills and

social-emotional dispositions in the directions of focused attention, mindful awareness,

and altruistic motivation and action through joint activity, mentorship, and sustained

practice.

At the heart of Contemplative Education as a practical approach is mindfulness train-

ing (MT). MT refers to secularized teaching approaches and practices aimed at cultivating

focused attention and a calm, clear, and non-reactive/non-judgmental awareness of what

224 s R.W. Roeser et al.

is occurring moment by moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). By cultivating a healthy mind, MT

is hypothesized to have implications for ethical development, leading to the develop-

ment, for instance, of individuals who “know what is good and spontaneously do it” in

their daily lives (Varela, 1999, p. 4). How is this so? As an applied scientiﬁc discipline, CE

aims to answer these questions.

CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES TO ETHICS IN EDUCATION

The need for ethics in education is particularly urgent in a world that is increasingly ﬂat,

hot, and crowded (Friedman, 2008), and where ethical lapses among individuals in high

positions of governance, ﬁnance, sports, and even public education seem all too common

today (Dalai Lama, 2012; Sachs, 2011). Paradoxically, given these pressing cultural needs,

moral or character development now appears to take a back seat to academic skill devel-

opment as a top educational priority (White House, 2000). Nevertheless, American

parents continue to place high value on having their children learn moral-behavioral

skills in school such as communicating emotions, taking turns and sharing, being fair

and caring, and being able to pay attention (Phi Delta Kappan, 2012).

Challenges in offering effective programs that impart these kinds of ethical skills and

dispositions have existed for decades. In a review of such efforts, however, Nucci and

Turiel (2009) concluded that

the general picture suggests that formal efforts to engage in moral education have

not translated into gains in student socialization beyond what is obtained though

widely recognized “best teaching” practices . . . that emphasize classroom community,

student intellectual autonomy, and high levels of academic instruction.

(p. 151)

Over the past several decades, various new programmatic initiatives have focused on

the cultivation of the social, emotional, and ethical development of the child as part of

an expanded vision in our nation’s public schools of what it means to become a fully

educated citizen beyond the mastery of the traditional three Rs. Evaluation research on

programs such as social-emotional learning (SEL), service learning, and conﬂict resolu-

tion has shown that these programs are effective. Evidence supports the notion that

social and emotional learning programs can reduce antisocial behavior (Wilson, Gott-

fredson, and Najaka, 2001) and increase school attendance and achievement (Durlak,

Weissberg, Taylor, Dymnicki, & Schellinger, 2011). Similarly, meta-analyses suggest that

the school-wide use of conﬂict resolution and peer remediation programs reduces anti-

social behavior, especially during adolescence (Burrell, Zirbel, & Allen, 2003; Garrard &

Lipsey, 2007). Finally, research on service learning has shown it is associated with

reduced academic and behavior problems and increased learning and prosocial behav-

ior, especially when reﬂection on offering service is a central feature of the program

(Conway, Amel, & Gerwien, 2009; Hart, Matsuba, & Atkins, this volume). We believe

that these kinds of programs work because they all incorporate a focus on community,

emotion and emotion regulation, and prosocial attitudes and behavior (e.g., Mahoney,

Larson, & Eccles, 2005). A focus on training attention in the service of emotion regula-

tion, self-awareness, awareness of others, and prosociality in a supportive community is

also central to contemplative education as a practical endeavor.

Contemplative Education s 225

DEFINING THE CONTEMPLATIVE SCIENCE PROJECT (CSP)

As an applied scientiﬁc endeavor, Contemplative Education is a subﬁeld of the Con-

templative Science Project (CSP). The CSP is a trans-disciplinary effort to describe and

explain the effects of engagement with contemplative practices on the mind, brain, body,

and social relationships within and across different periods in the lifespan (Roeser &

Zelazo, 2012; Wallace, 2007). As a meeting of the so-called East and West around mind-

body issues, the CSP has rich historical roots that date back centuries (Harrington, 2008).

The disciplines involved in the CSP today include psychological, social and developmental

science; biology, neuroscience and developmental neuroscience; and the humanities and

contemplative studies (see Figure 13.1). Contemplative studies refers to a discipline of

study and is populated by individuals who are conversant with the philosophies at the

heart of contemplative traditions; and who also have extensive ﬁrst-person experience in

engaging in the contemplative practices of such traditions.

Meta-theoretical Assumptions of CSP. The meta-theoretical assumptive framework

of the CSP diverges from classical Cartesian dualistic approaches to mind-body phe-

nomena and ways of conceptualizing human development (see Overton & Reese, 1977).

Speciﬁcally, the CSP is grounded in a dialectic rather than dualistic meta-model of

human development. In Figure 13.2, the ying-yang symbol provides a visual representa-

tion of two guiding assumptions regarding the process of human development from a

dialectic vantage point (Sameroff, 2010): (a) the unity of apparent opposites (e.g., mind

Contemplative Studies

Humanities

Psychology

Neuroscience

Biology

CONTEMPLATIVE SCIENCE PROJECT

HISTORY

Social Science

Figure 13.1 Trans-disciplinary Nature of the Contemplative Science Project.

226 s R.W. Roeser et al.

and body) and (b) the interpenetration of apparent opposites (e.g., genes and environ-

ments). According to Lerner and Overton (2008):

Today, the cutting edge of the study of the human life span is framed by a develop-

mental systems theoretical model, one that is informed by a post positivist, relational

metatheory that moves beyond classical Cartesian dichotomies, “avoids all splits,”

and transforms fundamental antinomies into co-equal and indissociable comple-

mentarities (Overton, 2006).

Throughout its history, the study of human development has been the captive

of numerous fundamental antinomies (Overton, 1998, 2006). Whereas the origi-

nal Cartesian splits were between mind and body or subject and object, the most

prominent of contemporary split conceptions has been, of course, between nature

and nurture or variants of this split, such as maturation versus experience or innate

versus acquired . . . the central emphasis in contemporary developmental science is

on mutually inﬂuential, individual-context relations.

(Lerner & Overton, 2008, pp. 245–246)

A dialectic metatheory of human development, including ethical development,

assumes that (a) there are continuities between human and primate evolution and

development; (b) that mutually inﬂuential, individual-context relations are funda-

mental in shaping development; (c) that the mind is embodied; and (d) that cognition

and emotion are intrinsically interdependent processes that can best be described to

Dialectic meta-model

of human development

Newton, Descartes

Clockworks/mechanism as root Image

Parts and forces

Genes vs environment

Nature vs nurture

Human vs animal

Mind vs body

Reason vs emotion

Dualistic meta-model

of human development

Einstein, Darwin

Cell/Process as root image

Part/whole relations (holons)

Bio-psycho-social transactions (epigenome)

Organism-in-activity-with-others

Human as evolved mammal

Mind is embodied

Top-down and bottom-up

Figure 13.2 Dualistic vs. Dialectical Meta-models of Human Development.

Contemplative Education s 227

operate in “top-down” and “bottom-up” fashions, respectively (de Waal, 2009; Varela,

Thompson, & Rosch, 1991; Zelazo & Carlson, 2012).

In a similar vein, Haidt and colleagues (Haidt, 2007; Haidt & Joseph, 2007) outlined

a new synthesis in moral psychology that attempts to move the ﬁeld beyond dualistic

and towards dialectic assumptions. Such assumptions include (a) the view that ethics

are grounded in long-evolved emotions characteristic of mammalian social life and

are “bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an

environment of concern, affection and warm-heartedness—or in a single word, compas-

sion” (Dalai Lama, 2012, p. xi); (b) that emotional intuitions and actions (bottom-up)

precede reasoned cognitions (top-down) in regulating ethical behavior; (c) that ethical

emotions, actions, and cognitions are transformed in ontogenetic time through culture

and social interaction; and (d) that ethics safeguard the welfare of individuals and

groups by balancing self-interests with the interests of others. Thus, both the CSP and

contemporary moral psychology posit that a moral sense exists from very early in devel-

opment in the forms of emotional intuitions and actions that are extended and trans-

formed through development into spontaneous ethical dispositions to act in particular

ways (Varela, 1999).

Two additional assumptions of the CSP that are important for understanding ethical

development are that (a) the brain is an inherently adaptive organ, evolved to change in

response to experience and intentional training and education (e.g., mindfulness train-

ing) through the processes of neuroplasticity (see MLERN, 2012); and (b) that contem-

plative practices such as MT are specialized forms of mental training that, when practiced

for an extended period of time, signiﬁcantly alter cognitive, emotional and motor pro-

cesses and the underlying neural substrates of what are classically called “skills” (e.g.,

Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Ericsson & Charness, 1994). Through sustained

training over time, newly acquired skills become automatized and “second nature” (see

Figure 13.5).

These two assumptions form the foundation of a secular account, based in the Learn-

ing Sciences, of ethical development as the learning and gradual automatization of ethical

skills and know-how (e.g., Varela, 1999). Such an account is compatible with new direc-

tions in moral psychology (e.g., Narvaez, 2013), and provides a means of understanding

what Gandhi may have meant when he suggested we must “be the change we wish to see

in the world” and what Mencius may have meant when he said that the virtuous person

is “one who knows what is good and spontaneously does it.”

Scientiﬁc Goals of CSP. The goals of the CSP are threefold (Baltes, Reese, & Nessel-

roade, 1977): (a) to describe the developmental effects of engagement in contemplative

practices on body, brain, mind, and social relationships; (2) to explain contemplative

practice effects at neurophysiological, psychological, and social levels of analysis; and (3)

to use descriptive and explanatory ﬁndings to optimize human development through the

introduction of contemplative practice-based interventions in families, schools, clinics,

and communities in ways attuned to the needs and requirements of culture, develop-

mental stage, and historical age (see Figure 13.1). During the past decade, the number of

peer-refereed journal articles and nationally funded research grants on the use of MT for

a variety of health and wellbeing outcomes has risen dramatically (see Roeser & Zelazo,

2012). Relatively few studies have adopted a developmental perspective to date regarding

these aims, however. Thus, the question of how mindfulness may contribute to the ethical

development of children and adolescents remains new and uncharted territory.

228 s R.W. Roeser et al.

Ways of Knowing. In order to achieve these scientiﬁc goals, the CSP draws on dialogue

and scientiﬁc collaboration between individuals representing the three broad sets of dis-

ciplines depicted in Figure 13.1. Through transdisciplinary collaboration, the CSP aims

to produce high quality studies that coordinate ﬁrst-, second-, and third-person accounts

of how various forms of contemplative training may affect human development. First-

person accounts refer to data gathered through phenomenological/self reports; second-

person accounts refer to data gathered from expert observers of target individuals—for

instance, parental ratings of children; third-person accounts refer to data collected from

non-subjective sources, for example, brain scans (de Wit, 1991; Varela & Shear, 1999).

MINDFULNESS TRAINING AND ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT

Given this basic assumptive framework, we are now in a position to address the question:

How might mindfulness training support the ethical development of children, adoles-

cents, and their caregivers such that they become people who know what is good and

spontaneously do it?

Contemplative Perspectives. From Buddhist perspectives, the training of attention

and emotion is central to ethical development and can be understood in relation to

progressions in motivation and behavior from self-interest to selﬂessness (altruism;

Dalai Lama, 2012; Ekman, Davidson, Ricard, & Wallace, 2005). Through training, an

individual is assisted in developing three sets of ethics (Dalai Lama, 2012) (1) the ethic

of restraint or self-control over afﬂictive emotions (e.g., fear, greed, jealousy, hatred)

and the actions that they motivate; (2) the ethic of virtue or prosocial emotions (e.g.,

kindness, joy) and the actions these motivate (e.g., consideration of others’ needs

alongside or even before our own; and (3) the ethic of altruism or selﬂess altruistic

motivations involving expanded feelings of love and kindness for all beings and the

actions these motivate. These three ethics can be conceptualized as a path of ethical

development (see Table 13.1).

Table 13.1 Preliminary Taxonomy of Ethical Aims of Contemplative Education

Child Quality Moral Emotions

Moral

Motivation

Self-System

Target

Type of

Ethic

Locus of Moral

Responsibility

Calm Anger, Fear, Desire,

Embarrassment, Guilt,

Shame, Disgust, Relief

Self-Control Self-Regulation Ethic of

Restraint

Personal

Responsibility for

Actions

Mindful and

Empathic

Empathy, Joy,

Sympathetic Joy

Prosociality Self-Awareness Ethic of

Virtue

Social

Responsibility to

Others

Kind Compassion, Love Altruism Self-

Transcendence

Ethic of

Altruism

Global

Responsibility to

All

Notes

1 Nucci (2001).

2 Roeser & Peck (2009); Vago and Silbersweig (2012).

3 Dalai Lama (2012).

4 Eccles & Roeser (2010).

Contemplative Education s 229

Scientiﬁc Perspectives. To provide a scientiﬁc grounding of these contemplative ideas on

attention and emotion training in ethics, we develop four basic issues. These include (a)

the role of attention in emotional self-control; (b) the role of attention and emotion in the

perception of the “ethical” in social interactions; (c) the role of attention and emotion in

the extension of the ethical in the directions of the Golden Rule and Great Compassion;

and (d) the role of attention and emotion regulation in remaining calm and practicing

“spontaneous virtuous action” in situations where another or oneself is under stress.

Attention and Emotion Regulation

Through the training of attention, the ability to regulate emotion generally, and to inhibit

impulsive, dominant response tendencies speciﬁcally (i.e., self-control), is enhanced.

This is due to the fact that the circuitry of emotion regulation overlaps considerably

with the circuitry of executive function/self control in the brain (MLERN, 2012; Zelazo

& Carlson, 2012). Mofﬁtt et al. (2011) have recently reported that self-control during

childhood predicts physical health, substance dependence, personal ﬁnances, and crimi-

nal offenses in young adulthood in a cohort of 1,000 children followed from birth to age

32 years. Thus, to the extent MT increases self-control in children, it has the potential to

exert long-term consequences on children’s ethical development and wellbeing.

Attention, Emotion, and the Perception of the “Ethical”

The training of emotion is also central to ethics, but what is the role of emotion in

ethical development? Nucci and Turiel (1978) empirically demonstrated that the ethical

domain is distinct from the domains of social-conventions and personal preferences as

sources of norms and rules for behavior. Children as young as 4–5 years of age intuitively

understand that unprovoked harm of another, or failing to help another in need, are acts

that are intrinsically wrong (because they violate fairness and reciprocity). By deﬁnition,

young children do not need to be socialized to understand this, or come to a personal

choice about such matters. Rather, the perception of moral virtue and transgressions

are theorized to be intrinsic to the events and people in question (Nucci & Turiel, 2009).

How?

As one example, consider someone observing someone else physically striking another

person in an unprovoked manner. In this case, the perceived consequences to the victim

(i.e., the perceived consequences of being struck) have intrinsic meaning, and it is this

intrinsic meaning, rather than societal prescription, that is hypothesized to determine

whether the event is judged as morally right or wrong (see Nucci & Turiel, 2009). It is

plausible that the “intrinsic meaning” that young children derive from such an act is

given in signiﬁcant part by the emotions aroused in actors and observers of the situation

(e.g., “That was wrong because it frightened and hurt that person and no-one wishes to

be scared or harmed and everyone has the right not to be”). From a dialectic perspective,

emotions can be understood as relational, thematic evaluations regarding the current

state of person–person or person–environment relations and related action readiness

(Lazarus, 1991). From this perspective, one knows something is wrong initially, percep-

tually, because it feels that way in the body.

Consistent with these views, the ethical domain, in contrast to the conventional or

personal domain of norms or rules for behavior, arises early in development and is

marked by its emotionally “hot” nature (Nucci, 2001). Ethical issues activate strong emo-

tions even in young children, whereas social-conventional rules or personal preferences

230 s R.W. Roeser et al.

less so (Arsenio, 1988; Arsenio & Lover, 1995). For instance, 5-, 8- and ten-year-olds

all report that a recipient, perpetrator, and an observer would feel positive emotion in

response to situations of distributive justice (sharing, being fair) or prosocial behavior

(helping, being helped). On the other hand, children also reported that recipients and

observers of selﬁsh behavior (harming, being unfair) would feel negative emotions such

as sadness, anger, and fear (Arsenio, 1988).

Other work is beginning to establish seeming

ethical preferences in even younger children. Aknin, Hamlin, & Dunn (2012) found, for

instance, that young children (around two years of age) expressed greater positive affect

in behavior when giving treats to others than when receiving treats themselves (which

was also associated with positive affect), even if this act of giving involved a cost to self.

Consistent with a dialectic perspective on emotion and development, the authors specu-

late that acts of kindness and generosity (giving and receiving gifts) may have long evo-

lutionary roots that cause such acts to be experienced emotionally as intrinsically “good/

liked” and worthy of emulation and extension to others.

A basic assumption in ancient Eastern and Western worlds is that the training of

attention is invaluable in ethical development because it improves an individual’s capa-

city to mindfully perceive and feel the non-virtuous and virtuous in daily life more

clearly (Dalai Lama, 2012; Varela, 1999). To the extent MT can help caregivers, children,

and adolescents to stabilize attention and calm emotional reactivity, the clarity of their

awareness and representations of social interactions may be enhanced in ways that foster

their ethical development.

Attention, Emotion, and the Extension of the Ethical

Enhanced awareness allows young people to directly observe the positive and negative

consequences of particular mind states and behaviors in themselves and other people

clearly and to learn from them (Dalai Lama, 2012). As a consequence of this enhanced

perception, we hypothesize that mindfulness training also supports the capacity of care-

givers, children, and adolescents to extend basic ethical intuitions regarding harm and

care to others near and far.

We assume that basic emotions involving the avoidance of harm (e.g., Nucci & Turiel,

1978) and the approach of care (Eisenberg, 1998; Gilligan, 1982) form the basis of moral

motivation. Through socialization, we hypothesize that most children learn to extend

these basic emotions to others along the lines of the Golden Rule and the concept of

moral reversibility (Nucci, 2001). This transformation is hypothesized to occur within

the contexts of average-expectable attachment relationships, authoritative parenting and

teaching practices, and supportive sibling and peer relationships (Nucci, 2001). Through

MT, we propose, the extension of non-harm and care can be widened further in the

directions of “Great Compassion” (Dalai Lama, 1999) to include unfamiliar and even

unknown others. The notion of extension is presented in Figure 13.3.

We propose that the stabilization of attention affected through attuned caregiving

and joint-attention, and the noting and labeling of signiﬁcant features of emotionally-

charged social experiences (e.g., feelings, feeling–action linkages), enhances the ability

of young people to clearly perceive and develop rich cognitive-affective representations

regarding ethical dilemmas they experience in daily life (e.g., Tharp & Gallimore, 1988).

Enriched perceptions and representations, in turn, enhance children’s ability to accu-

rately extend their moral understandings to situations and encounters that share cor-

respondences and afﬁnities with previously encountered ones—from the known to the

Contemplative Education s 231

similar (Varela, 1999). As discussed below, ethical enhancement practices that form a

key part of MT aim to increase this sphere of ethical extension beyond the known and

similar to the unknown and dissimilar (see Figure 13.3). This was the view of Mencius,

who posited, “truly virtuous people attend to their nature sufﬁciently well to understand

an event in terms of their experience and thus ensure that appropriate extension follows

easily” (Varela, 1999, p. 29).

Attention, Emotion Regulation, and Prosocial Behavior

In addition to clear awareness, another key factor in the cultivation and extension of

prosocial behavior is emotion regulation and the ability to maintain a calm mind and

body in distressing situations (Eisenberg & Eggum, 2009). Batson and his colleagues

(1999) differentiated between empathy and personal distress as motivators of prosocial

behavior. In this work, empathy is deﬁned as the capacity to understand and respond

to the affective experiences of others and is associated with an other-oriented, altruistic

motivational aim (assist the other person). In contrast, personal distress is deﬁned as a

self-focused, aversive, affective reaction to another’s emotion distress and is associated

with an egoistic or self-oriented motivational aim (e.g., to relieve one’s own distress).

Prosocial responding in the presence of another’s distress can be motivated by either

altruism or egoism (Batson, Anderson, & Collins, 2005).

Evidence suggests that under conditions of high empathic arousal due to the appre-

hension of another’s distress, emotion regulation is necessary if altruistically motiv-

ated responding is to occur (see Eisenberg & Eggum, 2009). By deﬁnition, empathic

arousal in the presence of another’s distress leads to personal feelings of distress (i.e.,

affective resonance). Effective emotion regulation in the presence of another’s distress

reduces the probability that feelings of personal distress will cascade into empathic

over-arousal and the consequent activation of withdrawal behavior or ego-motivated

helping. Empathic over-arousal is especially likely in stressful situations for indi-

viduals who are high in dispositional negative affect, high in susceptibility to vicari-

ous negative affect, and who have poor emotion regulation skills (Eisenberg, Fabes, &

KNOWN

Proximal others,

situations

Proximal others,

situations

SIMILAR

Distal others,

situations

UNKNOWN

BASIC EMOTIONS

1Avoid harm

1pproach care

SOCIAL MOTIVES EMBODIED PRINCIPALS

1Wisdom (e.g., moral imperative)

1)ve (e.g., Ahimsa)

DEVELOPMENT OF

GOLDEN RULE

DEVELOPMENT OF

GOLDEN RULE

DEVELOPMENT OF

GREAT COMPASSION

DEVELOPMENT OF

GREAT COMPASSION

TRUST /

MISTRUST

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL

SCAFFOLDING

SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL

SCAFFOLDING

ATTENTION

EMOTION

ATTENTION

EMOTION

ASSOCIATIVE

EXTENSIONS

ASSOCIATIVE

EXTENSIONS

IMAGINATIVE AND

REASONED EXTENSIONS

IMAGINATIVE AND

REASONED EXTENSIONS

ATTENTION

EMOTION

ATTENTION

EMOTION

Self

Caregivers

Sibs/peers

Self

Caregivers

Sibs/peers

1Avoid harming others

1""er care to others

Figure 13.3 Hypothesized Model of the Extension of Basic Moral Emotions to Embodied Moral Principles Through Social-

Emotional Scaffolding.

232 s R.W. Roeser et al.

Spinrad, 2006). Effective regulation of empathic arousal allows for the activation and

implementation of altruistic intentions aimed at helping the other. In other words, as

depicted in Figure 13.4, attention leads to empathic awareness, and emotion regulation

allows for that awareness to lead to the activation of altruistic intentions or compas-

sion—a strong desire to do something to reduce the suffering of others (Halifax, 2012).

Social neuroscientiﬁc ﬁndings provide support for this set of hypotheses regarding the

interconnections of empathy, emotion regulation, and altruistic responding to others

(Decety & Howard, 2013).

In summary, social interactions often activate strong emotions with intrinsic mean-

ings. With appropriate mindfulness and emotion regulation, these meanings can be

clearly perceived and can inform subsequent ethical behavior through the process of

extension. Clearly, the processes of ethical perception, extension and altruistic motiva-

tion require mindfulness and compassion on the part of caregivers (parents, teachers)

who are role models for and key socializers of children and adolescents. Therefore, assist-

ing adults to become experts in the mental skills and social-emotional dispositions that

underlie ethical development (calmness, mental clarity, disposition of kindness) is criti-

cally important. A growing body of evidence with adults suggests that MT affects basic

processes of attention, sensation-perception, emotion, and social cognition that underlie

ethical development (see Vago & Silbersweig, 2012).

EVIDENCE FOR EFFECTS OF MINDFULNESS TRAINING WITH ADULTS

Attention. From the contemplative traditions in which MT originated, training of sus-

tained focused attention is thought to promote tranquility of the mind, an essential step

for ethical development. Improving the efﬁciency and stability of attention also affords

powerful forms of behavioral and cognitive regulation (see Ochsner & Gross, 2005).

Studies show that MT improves adults’ ability to direct and sustain attention and to

monitor the focus of attention in a conscious way (Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007),

even in the presence of “hot” emotionally charged, but irrelevant, distractors (Ortner,

Kilner, & Zelazo, 2007). Research also shows that MT changes the underlying neural

substrates for these attentional abilities, with studies of individuals with 10,000 hours

or more of formal meditation practice (e.g., experts in meditation) showing enduring

changes in the neural circuits of attention (Davidson & Lutz, 2008).

DISTRESS

OF ANOTHER

PERSON

PERCEPTION EMOTION BEHAVIORMOTIVATION

Awareness of

outcome

Attention

empathy

Awareness and regulation

of empathic arousal

Implementation of

intention-in-action

Awareness of

what to do

CALM

CALMCLEAR

KIND CLEAR

MINDFULNESS

Figure 13.4 Hypothesized Example of How Mindfulness Can Facilitate Altruistic Behavior in the Presence of Another’s

Distress.

Contemplative Education s 233

Sensory-Perception. The development of focused attention and a calm, tranquil mind

is also critical to developing clearer perceptions of one’s surroundings, one’s relationships

with others, and the causes and consequences of one’s behavior. Research shows that MT

in adults is associated with enhanced sensory-perceptual clarity and reduced reliance on

information-processing biases (Cahn and Polich, 2009; Kerr et al., 2008; Lutz, Slagter,

Dunne, & Davidson, 2008; Lutz, Greischar, Perlman, & Davidson, 2009; MacLean et al.,

2010). Lutz and colleagues (2008), for instance, found that long-term meditators describe

subjective states of attention and awareness with more accuracy than novices, and that their

ﬁrst-person reports are strongly correlated with simultaneously measured brain activity.

Awareness and Regulation of Emotion. Research shows that MT enhances the clarity of

awareness of emotions as they manifest in the body and mind (e.g., Nielsen and Kasz-

niak, 2006), as well as individuals’ ability to regulate emotion (Baer, 2009). Noting and

labeling of mental experience is often taught in mindfulness-based practice as a way to

become more aware of one’s emotions. One study has demonstrated that trait mindful-

ness is correlated with accurately labeling emotions and the corresponding inhibitory

inﬂuence of the frontal cortex over the amygdala due to such labeling (Creswell, Way,

Eisenberger, & Lieberman, 2007).

Empathy and Prosociality. Prosocial motivation has been deﬁned as the expressed wish to

help others in need (Batson et al., 1999) whereas prosocial behavior is “behavior that bene-

ﬁts other people” (Staub, 1979, p. 2). Prosocial motivation is critically dependent upon mul-

tiple facets of empathic processes, such as mutual concern, perspective taking, experience

sharing, neural resonance, emotional contagion, and emotion regulation (Zaki & Ochsner,

2012). Research shows that MT enhances the neural circuits underlying these empathic

processes and awareness of others generally (Singer & Lamm, 2009). In a fMRI study of

experts and novices, Lutz, Brefczynski-Lewis, Johnstone, and Davidson (2008) found that

expertise in the form of 10,000 hours or more of a form of compassion meditation sensit-

izes the activation of neural circuits linked to empathy and theory of mind. Similarly, in

another study, Lutz et al. (2009) found that compassion meditation enhances the emo-

tional and somatosensory brain representations of others’ emotions, and that this effect is

modulated by expertise. It appears that as expertise in compassion increases, the threshold

for the activation of perception–emotion–action links in prosocial directions is diminished

and compassionate responding becomes “second nature” or spontaneous. In a recent social

psychology experiment with emerging adults, for example, Condon, Desbordes, Miller, and

DeSteno (2013) showed that MT was associated with actual prosocial helping behavior.

Research on loving-kindness meditation (LKM) practices with adults also shows relevant

changes in emotional processing, empathy, psychological wellbeing, and immune function

in adults (Hofmann, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011). In one randomized control trial, LKM

was found to increase feelings of implicit and explicit social connection towards novel other

people (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008).

MINDFULNESS TRAINING SPECIFICALLY FOR PARENTS AND

TEACHERS

Based on this work, MT programs for both parents and teachers have been developed.

We believe it is critically important to offer MT to caregivers to provide them with a

set of tools for personal stress-management that ultimately will improve their ability

to be calm, clear, and kind in their caregiving or teaching activities. In addition, the

234 s R.W. Roeser et al.

embodiment of virtue on the part of adults provides a powerful, implicit means of

socializing these same qualities in young people.

Research with Parents. Duncan, Coatsworth, and Greenberg (2009) proposed that MT

impacts basic dimensions of parenting such as attentive listening, emotional awareness,

self-regulation, non-judgmental acceptance of self and the child, and compassion for self

and child. At this time, only a few studies of mindful parenting have been conducted.

One randomized control trial (RCT) examined the effects of randomization to a

parenting program that included MT on parenting outcomes in 64 families in which

one of the parents was on methadone maintenance. The 10–12 week program included

one 60–120 minute in-home session per week. Results showed that parents receiving the

MT-infused program showed signiﬁcantly reduced parental stress, rigid parenting atti-

tudes, and child behavior problems compared to others receiving a brief intervention or

treatment-as-usual (TAU); as well as signiﬁcantly reduced child abuse potential com-

pared to those in TAU (Dawe & Harnett, 2007). Results were maintained at three- and

six-month follow-up.

A second RCT on mindfulness and parenting was done by Coatsworth, Duncan,

Greenberg, and Nix (2010). In a sample of 65 families with an early adolescent, research-

ers examined the effects of randomization to either a parent intervention (Strengthen-

ing Families Program) infused with mindfulness practices, the parent-intervention as

usual, or a waitlist control condition. The MT-infused program taught both parents and

their adolescents (children ages 11–14) very brief exercises using mindfulness. Results

showed that while both intervention programs improved child management practices,

the mindfulness-infused parenting intervention saw signiﬁcant improvements in the use

of mindful parenting strategies, use of effective management practices, and in the affec-

tive relationship between parent and child. Mindful parenting mediated the relationship

between MT and improved affective relationship quality.

In a third RCT, Benn, Akiva, Arel, and Roeser (2012) found that parents of special

needs children randomized to a ﬁve-week MT reported greater increases in empathic

concern and tendency to forgive than parents in the waitlist control condition. In a

series of small-scale clinical case studies of parents of special needs children, Singh and

colleagues (2006, 2007, 2010) found that MT for parents of special needs children was

associated with improvements in parents’ satisfaction with their parenting skills and

interactions with their children, increases in their children’s social skills and a reduction

in child non-compliance (refusal by child to comply with instructions or requests made

by the mother within the time parameters set by the mother).

Research with Teachers. Similarly, only a handful of studies of MT with teachers have

been published to date. In an early pilot RCT, Winzelberg and Luskin (1999) examined

the effects of MT on teachers’ job stress. The four-week program included one 45-minute

session per week. The meditation technique taught used sound as a focusing device fol-

lowed by one of the following practices: mantra repetition (silent repetition of a word

or phrase), slowing down (the deliberate practice of slowing down one’s actions), and

one-pointed attention (the deliberate practice of focusing attention on one thing at a

time). Results showed that teachers randomized to MT showed greater reductions in

self-reported somatic, emotional, and behavioral manifestations of stress compared to

controls.

Franco and colleagues (2010) conducted an RCT for public school teachers that

compared a mindfulness intervention to an active control group on the reduction of

Contemplative Education s 235

psychological distress. Teachers were randomly assigned to either a 10-week mindful-

ness intervention or a 10-week psychomotor therapy program. Mindfulness practices

included body scans, focused attention on the breath in conjunction with a word or

sound, group discussion of practice, and presentation of metaphors and exercises to

explain mindfulness. The psychomotor intervention involved playing games and doing

exercises with large balls, rings, music, etc. Results showed that teachers who were ran-

domized to MT showed signiﬁcantly greater reductions in self-reported psychological

distress (especially somatization) after the program and at four-month follow-up com-

pared to those in the psychomotor group.

In an uncontrolled pilot study, Jennings, Snowberg, Coccia, and Greenberg (2011)

examined the effects of a teacher MT designed to reduce stress and burnout. The program

took place over four to ﬁve weeks and included four day-long sessions. Program activ-

ities involved teaching of emotion skills and mindful listening, and mindfulness prac-

tices like focused attention on the breath and body scans. The program was assessed in

two samples: in-service teachers in a lower SES urban setting, and pre-service student-

teachers in a university, suburban setting with results showing increases in self-reported

mindfulness among the in-service teachers.

In an RCT, Kemeny and her colleagues (2012) evaluated the effects of a mindful-

ness intervention on the wellbeing of teachers. Eighty-two female public school teachers

took part in an eight-week, 42-hour meditation/emotion regulation training. Program

activities included focused attention on the breath meditation, open-monitoring medi-

tation, LKM, training in emotion skills, mindful movement, and didactic instruction on

emotions and life purposes. Results showed that teachers randomized to MT reported

greater increases in self-reported mindfulness, greater improvements on a behavioral

task requiring recognition of emotions, and greater reductions in self-reported rumi-

nation and symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as increases in positive affect

compared to waitlist controls.

In an RCT with educators and parents of special needs students, Benn et al. (2012)

examined the effects of MT on stress, distress, and teaching and parenting practices.

The program included ten two and a half hour sessions over ﬁve weeks and two six-

hour retreats. MT program activities included body scans, focused attention on the

breath meditation, open monitoring meditation, LKM, forgiveness meditation, and

didactic instruction regarding emotion, forgiveness, and stress reactivity. Results showed

that teachers and parents randomized to MT showed greater increases in self-reported

mindfulness, self-compassion, forgiveness of others, and empathic concern for others;

and greater declines in stress, negative affect, anxiety, and depression at the end of the

program and at follow-up two months later compared to waitlist controls.

In two RCTs of the same MT as in Benn et al. (2012), Roeser and his colleagues (2013)

examined effects of randomization to MT on Canadian and American public school

teachers’ mindfulness and stress reduction. The eight-week program included 11 sessions

for a total of 36 hours of MT. Results showed that teachers randomized to MT showed

greater increases in self-reported mindfulness and occupational self-compassion, greater

improvements on a behavioral task requiring focused attention and working memory;

and greater reductions in occupational stress and burnout at post-program and follow-up

compared to waitlist controls. Results also showed that group differences in mindfulness

and occupational self-compassion at post-program mediated longer-term reductions in

occupational stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression.

236 s R.W. Roeser et al.

Summary. The emerging research on mindfulness-based contemplative practice with

adults—particularly those who are parents or teachers, as well as our emerging under-

standing of the plasticity of the brain across development (e.g., Decety & Howard, 2013;

Giedd, 2008; Zelazo & Lyons, 2012), provide scientiﬁc warrants for a careful exploration

of MT with school-aged children and adolescents (MLERN, 2012).

MINDFULNESS TRAINING WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Similar to work with parents and teachers, research on MT for children and adolescents

in clinical and community settings is only beginning. Early efforts have focused prim-

arily on adapting practices for use with children and adolescents, and on examining

the self-regulatory and stress reduction effects of such practices. There exist almost no

studies to date examining the prosocial outcomes of MT (Greenberg & Harris, 2012;

Zelazo & Lyons, 2012).

Two randomized control trial studies have examined the effects of a developmentally

appropriate MT (Kaiser-Greenland, 2010) for pre-school and elementary school children

on executive function and self-regulation, respectively. The program included focused

attention on the breath as well as games and activities promoting awareness and atten-

tion regulation. In pre-school aged children, randomization to a ﬁve-week long version

of the MT was associated with improvements in sustained attention and perspective-

taking compared to controls (Johnson, Forston, Gunnar, & Zelazo, 2011). For children

with poor executive function in grades 2–3, Flook and colleagues (2010) found that an

eight-week MT program was associated with increases in parent- and teacher-ratings of

students’ ability to direct, sustain, and monitor attention at post-test compared to con-

trols.

Napoli, Krech, and Holley (2005) examined the effects of randomization to a 24-week

MT program on attention and anxiety levels in ﬁrst to third grade students. The primary

activities included focused attention on the breath and the body, in which attention is

gradually guided through each part of the body to increase somatic/emotional aware-

ness; and a mindful movement activity to bring together focused attention and motor

behavior. Results indicated that students receiving the MT demonstrated decreases in

teacher-rated attentional problems, decreases in self-reported test anxiety, and increases

in a behavioral measure of selective visual attention, compared to those in the control

condition.

Mendelson et al. (2010) examined the effects of randomization to a 12-week mindful

yoga program on involuntary stress responses, mental health, and social adjustment for

inner-city elementary school students in grades 4–5. Children were taught yoga-inspired

postures and movement series that were selected to enhance muscle tone and ﬂexibility,

as well as the health beneﬁts of the poses. At the end of each class the instructors guided

children through a mindfulness practice, which involved attending to a speciﬁc focus

for several minutes, such as paying attention to each breath or sending kind thoughts to

others. Results showed that children in the mindful yoga program self-reported greater

decreases in rumination, intrusive thoughts, and involuntary emotional arousal to stress-

ful events compared to controls.

In a quasi-experimental study with elementary school students in grades 4–7 of what

would become the MindUp program (Hawn Foundation, 2011), Schonert-Reichl and

Lawlor (2010) examined the effects of a 10-week MT on students’ social-emotional

Contemplative Education s 237

wellbeing and socially-responsible behavior compared to controls. The central mind-

fulness practice in this program was a focused attention meditation done three times

per day for three minutes throughout the duration of the program. Results showed that

teachers rated students who received MT as less aggressive and less oppositional, better

able to focus attention, and more likely to act prosocially towards others compared to

teacher ratings of students in the control group. In addition, students receiving MT

reported greater wellbeing (optimism, positive mood).

A recent school-based randomized-control trial by Raes, Grifﬁth, Gucht, and Wil-

liams (2013) with 408 adolescents and emerging adults aged 13–20 in Flanders, Belgium

examined the effects of MT on reducing and preventing depression. Results showed

that students randomized to MT reported a greater decrease in symptoms of depression

post-MT and at a one-year follow-up compared to controls. Similar results in RCTs with

clinically-referred adolescents have been obtained in the USA (Biegel, Brown, Shapiro, &

Schubert, 2009).

In a non-randomized study with a control group involving 150 high school students

in grades 11–12, Broderick and Metz (2009) examined the preliminary efﬁcacy of a ﬁve-

week MT for adolescents (Broderick and Jennings, 2012) on mental health outcomes. Each

session included a short introduction of the topic (e.g., body awareness, understanding

and working with feelings, reducing harmful self-judgments), several activities for group

participation and discussion to engage students in the lesson, and an opportunity for

in-class mindfulness meditation practice. Mindfulness practices included focused atten-

tion on the breath and body, open-monitoring meditation, and LKM. Results showed a

signiﬁcant reduction in negative affect and a signiﬁcant increase in feelings of relaxation

and self-acceptance among adolescent girls receiving MT compared to controls.

Finally, two RCTs have been done looking at the stress-reduction effects of mindful

yoga with high school students. The secular yoga program included four key elements:

physical exercises and postures, breathing exercises, deep relaxation, and meditation. The

majority of yoga postures were simple and adaptable for all physical ﬁtness levels. First,

Noggle and colleagues (2012) examined the effects of randomization to a 10-week yoga

versus physical education class as usual on 11th and 12th grade high school students’

self-reported self-regulation and wellbeing. Results showed that students randomized

to yoga showed greater reductions in negative affect and anxiety. Also investigating the

program’s effects on 11th and 12th grade students, Khalsa and colleagues (2012) found

that randomization to an 11-week mindful yoga program versus physical education was

associated with students’ self-reported increases in anger regulation and the ability to

bounce back from stressful events, as well as decreases in fatigue.

In sum, preliminary evidence regarding how developmentally-appropriate MT can

stabilize attention, calm the mind, and reduce negative affect among children and ado-

lescents exists; and there is some preliminary evidence that MT might improve students’

social adjustment as well. Overall, there exists a need to increase the rigor of research in

future studies of MT in education (randomization, active control groups, blinded studies,

non-self-report measures), and to examine the effects of MT and yoga not just on self-

regulation and stress reduction, but also on self-awareness and empathy, kindness, and

altruism (see Table 13.1). Summarizing this emerging body of research, Greenberg and

Harris (2012) concluded “meditation and yoga may be associated with beneﬁcial out-

comes for children and youth, but the generally limited quality of research tempers the

allowable conclusions” (p. 161).

238 s R.W. Roeser et al.

NEUROCOGNITIVE MODELS OF THE EFFECTS OF SPECIFIC

CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES

The question of how particular mindfulness practices shape these basic processes of

attention, sensation-perception, empathy, and compassion at the levels of mental skills

and underlying neural substrates is also an intense focus of research currently. Vago and

Silbersweig (2012) developed a series of process models of the four main contempla-

tive practices used in MT programs for children, adolescents, and adults today. These

practices include three types of formal meditation (focused attention, open monitor-

ing, ethical enhancements) and mindful movement practices (mindful yoga). Models are

presented in Figure 13.5.

Focused Attention Meditation (FA). A foundational form of mindfulness practice called

focused attention meditation aims to cultivate vivid forms of attention on an object (e.g.,

the breath, external sound, an image) for sustained periods of time, as well as meta-

awareness with regard to whether one’s attention is focused on the object of attention

or not (see Lutz, Dunne, & Davidson, 2007). FA meditation “exercises” top-down atten-

tional control in the forms of response inhibition, set shifting, sustained attention, and

monitoring (Zelazo & Carlson, 2012); and results in the calming of the mind and body

(Wallace, 2007). The ability to stay calm and clear in stressful or distressing situations is

clearly central to ethical development as discussed earlier (see Figure 13.4). Such prac-

tices, through use of props to help direct attention to the body, feelings, and the breath,

are used even with young children (Kaiser-Greenland, 2010). A process model of this

practice and its putative training effects is presented in Figure 13.5a.

Open-Monitoring Meditation (OM). A second form of practice called receptive or

open-monitoring (OM) meditation is characterized by the absence of a focus on a par-

ticular object. Instead, attention is directed towards any sensations, feelings, images, and

thoughts that arise while maintaining awareness of the phenomenal ﬁeld of awareness as

a non-attached observer (see Lutz et al., 2007). Novices begin by actively monitoring and

labeling sensations, feelings, images, and thoughts. Verbal labeling increases awareness

of these sensory-affect states and forms of thinking. Although distraction and discur-

sive thinking may arise often in novices practicing OM meditation, the practitioner is

encouraged to continually rest in awareness of moment to moment experience and avoid

any cognitive forms of appraisals/judgments. Distraction and mind-wandering are also

typically associated with the arousal of negative affect. Thus, the practice affords both

attentional and emotion training through de-centering and self-compassion. De-center-

ing is the ability to create psychological distance between one’s perception and response.

De-centering with respect to the activated phenomena in the stream of consciousness

from moment to moment is described as a critical self-regulatory capacity that emerges

from OM meditation (Vago & Silbersweig, 2012).

Eventually, through training, the active noting of mental contents moment to

moment (e.g., thinking, feelings, visualizing, perceiving) can cease, and the process of

mental noting becomes effortless. At the point in which mental noting becomes effort-

less, non-conscious, embodied forms of conditioning have increased the efﬁciency of

substrates within the attentional system, resulting in decreased allotment of attentional

resources towards any particular feeling, image, or thought. Perception is clariﬁed, emo-

tional reactivity is reduced, and attention efﬁciency is increased. The ethical implica-

tions of such outcomes seem self-evident. Figure 13.5b illustrates a process model for

Contemplative Education s 239

open-monitoring practice. Given the metacognitive demands of this kind of practice, it

is usually introduced in adolescence and beyond (e.g., Broderick, 2013).

Ethical Enhancement Practices (EE). A third kind of practice being explored in secular

settings is what we call Ethical Enhancement Practices (EE; see Figure 13.5c). Such prac-

tices involve explicit instructions for visualization (imagining others), emotion cultivation

(love, forgiveness), and extension of that feeling to the imagined others (Varela, 1999). The

cultivation of loving-kindness (Pali; metta) is an example of an EE practice, and is based on

the idea that all beings wish to be happy (Ricard 2003; Salzberg & Bush, 1999). This practice

is characterized by progressively cultivating loving-kindness towards oneself, a good friend,

a neutral person, a difﬁcult person, all four of the above equally, and then gradually the

entire universe. For a “neutral” person, the practitioner is encouraged to choose someone

they may come into contact with every day, but who does not give rise to strong emo-

tions. For a “difﬁcult” person, the practitioner is encouraged to choose someone strongly

disliked. Furthermore, the practitioner is encouraged to break down the barriers between

self and others by practicing loving-kindness repeatedly, achieving mental detachment and

impartiality towards the four persons, including him/herself, the close friend, the neutral

person, and the hostile person. EE practices are unique from the others in that they recruit

positive forms of reappraisal (Garland, Gaylord, and Park, 2009), in which there is sec-

ondary appraisal of stressor stimuli (e.g., difﬁcult person) that allows for reframing with

positive emotion. Most other mindfulness-based practices do not reframe any experience

as positive, but rather label valence with a neutral attitude—as a form of acceptance and

non-judgment. A process model of EE practices is presented in Figure 13.5c. Loving-kind-

ness meditation has the effect of engaging the social cognitive network, a network of brain

areas responsible for perspective taking, theory of mind (ToM), and empathic concern.

Such practices can be modiﬁed for even young children (e.g., Kaiser-Greenland, 2010).

Mindful Movement (MM). Finally, and perhaps most importantly for considering the

needs of children and youth, contemplative practices involving mindful movement (e.g.,

yoga, tai-chi) are very popular. Mindful movement practices train attention through a

focus on the whole body and increase awareness of bodily states and sensations. In this way,

a “gross object” that is concrete and tangible (the body) becomes the focus of attention,

and training in how to “transfer” mindfulness to action in the world is fostered. In adults,

mindful movement practices show some of the strongest effects on outcome variables com-

pared to the formal sitting practices (Carmody and Baer, 2008). A process model of EE

practices is presented in Figure 5d. The critical mechanisms by which movement practices

exert their putative effects include parasympathetic activation (e.g., de-activating the stress

response), aerobic ﬁtness, musculoskeletal strength and ﬂexibility, and embodiment of a

calm, clear, and focused mind. These practices are adaptable for any age.

CONCLUSIONS

We began this chapter by introducing Contemplative Education as a newly emerging

approach to holistic and ethical education, anchored in insights from deep in the history

of both Western and Eastern culture. Perhaps the two guiding pillars of Contempla-

tive Education are those of our shared humanity—that we all aspire for happiness and

freedom from suffering; and interdependence—that no person is an island, each a part of

the main called humanity. Through a supportive community, mentorship, and practices

that train attention and emotion, we suggested that Contemplative Education aims at the

Focus

attention

Working

memory

Set formation

(practice instruction)

Intention and

motivation

Orienting

Engagement

Intended

object

(breath)

Distraction

Executive

monitoring

(meta-awareness)

Mental

stabilization

Mental

proliferation

Motor learning

Disengagement

Response

inhibition

Emotion

regulation

Effort

Equanimity

Clarity

Affective

response

Episodic and

procedural

memory

Decentering

Unintended

object

(sensory or

mental event)

HabitHabit

Ambient

attention

Working

memory

Set formation

(practice instruction)

Intention and

motivation

Orienting

Engagement

Executive

monitoring

(meta-awareness)

Mental

proliferation

Motor learning

Disengagement

Response

inhibition

Emotion

regulation

Effort

Equanimity

Clarity

Affective

response

Episodic and

procedural

memory

Decentering

HabitHabit

Auditory/

linguistic

Visual

Viscero-

somatic

Arising

Passing

Rest

Mental noting and labeling

Figure 13.5a/b/c/d Four Theoretical Models of the Neural-Psychological Processes Recruited During Contemplative Practices.

Set formation

(practice instruction)

Imagined

suffering

Clarity/equinamity

Open monitoring

(meta awareness)

Episodic

memory recall

(particular person

and context)

New episodic

memory

Prosocial concern

mentalizing

shared experience

Positive

affective

reappraisal

Extinction

Reconsolidation

Orienting

Motor learning

Intention and

motivation

Breath regulation

Stress response

SELF

YOGA

Motor learning

Goal setting

Ethics

Breath

Posture

Unintended

object

Disengagement

Response

inhibition

Executive monitoring

(witness consciousness)

Affective

response

Attentional orienting and

engagement

working memory

Embodied behavior

Goal monitoring

and self-correction

Regulated

self

Ethics Meditation Postures

Physiological

calming

Parasympathetic

activation

Appraisal

Reappraisal

Aerobic exercise

and flexibility

Cravings

avoidance

Distraction

Sensory-motor

integration

Volitional

attention

Intention

Motivational

drive

Musculoskeletal

Strengthening

Psychological and

physical wellbeing

Pro-social and

ethical behavior

Cognitive

Behavioral

Emotional

242 s R.W. Roeser et al.

cultivation of calm bodies, attentive minds, and empathic and caring hearts (see Table

13.1). We also discussed how secularized mindfulness training is a core practice in Con-

templative Education. MT represents one way of training attention, emotion, sensation

and perception, and empathy in ways that support the ethical development of children,

adolescents, and adults.

We then described the Contemplative Science Project, and noted its aims are to

describe and understand efforts at mindfulness training in families, schools, and com-

munity settings with children, adolescents, and the adults who raise them. We suggested

that the CSP is pursuing questions about the ethical development of children and ado-

lescents that are similar to several new directions in moral psychology, moral educa-

tion, and character development today (e.g., Narvaez, 2013). These include a focus on:

(a) the differential roles of conscious cognitive and non-conscious emotional processes

in ethical action, and educational approaches to cultivating each; (b) the development

of ethical dispositions and character as forms of expertise; (c) the neurobiology under-

lying ethical development; and (d) the central roles that sensation-perception, attention,

and the emotions play in ethical perception and action.

We then proposed how MT might contribute to the ethical development of children

and adolescents by (a) helping them to develop skills and dispositions associated with

abstentions from destructive motivations and actions (i.e., those marked by selﬁshness

that fails to account for the rights and welfare of others), and the cultivation of virtuous

motivations and actions (e.g., those marked either by “wise selﬁshness” in which self-

pursuits are balanced with needs of others, or those marked by “compassion/altruism”

in which one dedicates one’s efforts to selﬂessly serving others (Dalai Lama, 2012). By

cultivating self-control and emotional regulation, focused attention, clearer perception,

and greater empathy, we suggested that MT affects the fundamental processes under-

lying ethical development. We then reviewed the nascent research base on the effects of

MT on adult caregivers as well as children and youth. We noted that although this work

is just beginning, there are some promising indications of the efﬁcacy of MT programs.

Although we see this as an exciting new area of study and practice in ethical develop-

ment, clearly more research and practical innovation is needed before deﬁnitive insights

into the feasibility, efﬁcacy, and effectiveness of MT in education can be ascertained. In

addition, future work needs to focus on the kinds of outcomes of interest to those in this

handbook: How might MT shape the ethical development of individuals? In closing, we

want to reiterate that we believe the greatest gift MT may offer in the ﬁelds of moral and

character education is a way of teaching skills and dispositions with which, through their

application in their own lives, young people can discover the intrinsic value of virtue

for themselves through their own embodied experience. Such a process of ethical self-

discovery through the use of MT does not require belief or faith in any religion. As the

14th Dalai Lama (1999) put it:

Our own heart, our own mind is the temple. The doctrine is compassion. Love for

others and respect for their rights and dignity, no matter who or what they are:

ultimately these are all we need. So long as we practice these in our daily lives, then

no matter if we are learned or unlearned, whether we believe in Buddha or God, or

follow some other religion or none at all, as long as we have compassion for others

and conduct ourselves with restraint out of a sense of responsibility, there is no

doubt we will be happy.

Contemplative Education s 243

NOTE

1. It turns out that until adolescence, children tend to see victimizers as “happy” and do not see that it is often

unhappiness and suffering that leads individuals to act in unethical ways (see Nucci, 2001). This suggests that

scaffolding this kind of awareness through noting and labeling is a key aspect of disrupting hostile attribu-

tions to others who act out in antisocial ways. Training students to have compassion for bullies is implicated

here.

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248

RESEARCH-BASED FUNDAMENTALS OF THE EFFECTIVE

PROMOTION OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IN

SCHOOLS

Marvin W. Berkowitz and Melinda C. Bier*

The intentional promotion of positive development in youth is an age-old project, prob-

ably a human enterprise since the earliest forms of human community. No society can

endure if it does not take seriously the fundamental project of socializing subsequent

generations. Translation of two Sumerian tablets give us evidence that this inclination

was evident over 4,000 years ago:

My son, let me give you instructions. Pay attention to them! Do not beat a farmer’s

son, or he will break your irrigation canal. . . . When you are drunk, do not judge. . . .

Do not break into a house. . . . Do not speak with a girl when you are married, the

[likelihood of] slander is strong. . . . Do not allow your sheep to graze in untested

grazing grounds. . . . Submit to strength. Bow down to the mighty man.

(A Sumerian Father Gives Advice to his Son, about 2300

BCE)

Why do you idle about? Go to school, recite your assignment, open your schoolbag,

write your tablet, let your “big brother” write your new tablet for you. Be humble

and show fear before your apprentice teacher. When you show terror, he will like

you. . . . Never in my life did I make you carry reeds to the canebrake. I never said

to you “Follow my caravans.” I never sent you to work as a laborer. “Go, work and

support me,” I never in my life said that to you. Others like you support their parents

by working. . . . Compared to them you are not a man at all. Night and day you waste

in pleasures. . . . Among all craftsmen that live in the land, no work is more difﬁcult

than that of a scribe. [But] it is in accordance with the fate decreed by [the god] Enlil

that a man should follow his father’s work.

(A Sumerian Father Wants His Teen-Ager To Be A Scribe, about 2000

BCE)

Over the ensuing four millennia, the body of literature describing how to raise and

educate children and adolescents continued to grow, so that now it is a massive

Research-Based Fundamentals for Character s 249

collection of advice, unfortunately often conﬂicting, and more importantly for this dis-

cussion, frequently not based in scientiﬁc evidence and theory. This is just as true

regardless of whether one examines the literature on parenting for character develop-

ment or the literature on educating for character development.

In this chapter, a more scientiﬁc approach will be brought to bear on just this ques-

tion: What do we know scientiﬁcally about best practices in fostering moral and charac-

ter development in general, and particularly in schools?

THE SEMANTIC MINEFIELD

Before we can reap the lessons of the research, however, we need to turn to one of the

obstacles in describing the research: the problem of language and deﬁnition. This has

proved to be a rather intractable problem (Berkowitz, 1997; Smagorinsky & Taxel,

2005), and it only seems to be getting more complex. The authors currently work

mostly under the rubric of “character education” but have all also done similar work

under other names; for example, moral education, values education, child develop-

ment, social-emotional learning, primary prevention, positive youth development,

and youth empowerment. Many colleagues have worked under still other rubrics for

the same or similar work, such as service learning, citizenship education, and science

technology and society (STS).

Deﬁning each term so that it is clear is difﬁcult enough, but deﬁning them so that

they are clearly distinct from each other appears impossible because of the remarkable

overlap between most of them. We will not attempt to create a taxonomy of the disparate

terms and ﬁelds that intersect when one attempts to promote healthy and positive devel-

opment of youth in educational settings, because (1) it is beyond the purview of this

chapter; (2) we have made some attempts to do this elsewhere (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a;

Berkowitz, Sherblom, Bier, & Battistich, 2006); and (3) it may ultimately be impossible

because of the ill-deﬁned boundaries of many of these ﬁelds, as well as the polarizing and

projective nature of the promotion of “goodness.”

Instead we will simply carve out our turf by trying to deﬁne what we include when

we talk about character education. Character education occurs in educational set-

tings. Whereas there are many educational settings, for practical purposes more than

for any other reason, we try to limit our scope to pre-kindergarten through 12th

grade schools, or what many other cultures refer to as primary and secondary schools.

We also try to limit our scope to what happens during the regular school day, thus

avoiding after-school programs and extracurricular programs that occur outside of

regular school hours, although they may be bundled with school day implementation

strategies. Certainly these are artiﬁcial lines we have drawn, but when one focuses

on intentional efforts to promote positive character in youth, one has to draw lines

because so much (albeit not enough) of a society’s efforts are directed toward this

fundamental human project. This is not to devalue the other spheres of inﬂuence

(certainly families and more particularly parenting are the primary “character edu-

cators” and we have become increasingly concerned about the powerful impact of

the media on youth character as they have become more ubiquitous, ambiguous, and

graphic); rather it is intended to focus on a developmental sphere of inﬂuence that is

signiﬁcant, common, and more readily accessed for intervention. Furthermore, as we

have learned (Berkowitz, 2012a; Berkowitz & Grych, 1998, 2000), the fundamental

250 s M.W. Berkowitz and M.C. Bier

principles of what promotes character development remain much the same across dif-

ferent domains of inﬂuence. Child development is impacted by the same fundamental

forces and strategies, regardless of the source (e.g., parents vs. teachers).

Within those educational settings, we focus on those activities and processes that

should inﬂuence student character development. That in itself is rife with difﬁculties. By

what basis should they have such an inﬂuence? Must we individually justify each process

and practice we examine? While one could argue afﬁrmatively to the latter question, we

will take the authors’ prerogative and allow ourselves some slack here. As experts in the

ﬁeld, we will use our professional judgments to decide what can reasonably be included

in the domain of character education, knowing full well that there is extensive disagree-

ment about this.

But another issue about the selection of variables of inﬂuence has to do with inten-

tionality. While we would prefer to examine only intentionally targeted inﬂuences,

given the nascent state of this ﬁeld, some ﬁshing is warranted. For instance, we believe a

powerful, even critical, variable in the effectiveness of character education is the nature

of school leadership, especially the degree to which leadership understands deep school

reform-based character education, is committed to it, and can serve as an instructional

leader for it (Berkowitz, 2011; Berkowitz, Pelster, & Johnston, 2012). Yet little is known

about the impact of school leadership and rarely is it an intentionally targeted aspect of

character education (Devaney, O’Brien, Resnik, Keister, & Weissberg, 2006; Kam, Green-

berg, & Walls, 2003). An even stronger but related argument can be made for the nature

of the adult culture in schools (Berkowitz, 2012a), another variable for which there is

little research (cf. Bryk & Schneider, 2002). In one sense this is a moot argument, as we

can only report on that which has been studied thus far, and these unintentional vari-

ables almost by deﬁnition are not typically studied. However, as we also want to address

what needs to be known, it is worth making this point.

The ﬁnal piece of the deﬁnitional puzzle has to do with outcome variables. Up to this

point we have really focused on the second word in the term “character education”; that

is, education. We deﬁned it as pre-K to 12th grade, during the school day, and expected to

impact student character development. However, that still leaves the ﬁrst word, “character.”

If, for us, character education is the set of practices and programs during the pre-K to 12th

grade school day that should inﬂuence student character development, what is this student

character that we expect to develop? Here we will simply rely on a deﬁnition that we have

been using for a while: Character is the set of psychological characteristics that motivate

and enable an individual to function as a competent moral agent. In other words, it is

those aspects of one’s psychological makeup that impact whether one does the right thing,

whether that entails telling the truth, helping an unpopular student who is in jeopardy,

resisting the temptation to cheat or steal, or some other matter of moral functioning.

These characteristics span a range of psychological domains. One common shorthand

for this range has been adopted by the Character Education Partnership in their deﬁni-

tion of character as “understanding, caring about, and acting upon core ethical values”

(www.character.org). This tri-partite deﬁnition incorporates aspects of the cognitive,

affective/motivational, and behavioral domains of psychological functioning and devel-

opment (for a fuller explication see Berkowitz, 2012b). “Of course, this still leaves open

the question of what is moral, but we will not attempt to deﬁne this other than to rely

on the millennia old wisdom of philosophers and simply refer the reader back to them”

(cf. Berkowitz, 2012b).

Research-Based Fundamentals for Character s 251

WHAT IS NEEDED

Years of consultation with, training of, and observation of educators grappling with how

to effectively promote character development has led to the recognition of the main obs-

tacles to successful moral and character education. Educators typically need assistance

with the following:

1. Understanding the nature of character and how it develops; i.e., what it is and

what impacts its development;

2. Authentically allowing themselves to give priority to moral and character

education (often in the face of countervailing historical, political, cultural, and

economic forces);

3. Thinking sociologically (e.g., understanding character education as, in large

part, fundamentally organizational/institutional reform), and not just peda-

gogically and psychologically;

4. Acquiring the often complex knowledge and developing the often equally

complex pedagogical competencies required to be an effective moral and char-

acter educator.

This chapter will present what is empirically known about effective moral and character

development in an attempt to address all four of these needs, but will focus most exten-

sively on those aspects of needs 1, 3, and 4 that directly deal with evidence-based moral

and character education practice. Most centrally, however, the focus will be on what

research tells us about effective character education practice.

MAJOR SOURCES OF EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

Over a decade ago, the authors began to survey what was empirically known about

school-based character education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a), and were then surprised to

uncover 69 scientiﬁcally sound studies of relevance. More recently, in a meta-analysis of

studies of social-emotional learning, Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger

(2011) identiﬁed 213 studies of relevance. Whereas SEL is not identical with character

education, they are largely overlapping domains. In other words, there is a growing and

substantial body of relevant literature upon which to draw in order to address the ques-

tion of effective practice in this domain. Hence, we have elected to look at a set of meta-

analyses and reviews rather than to try to examine all the individual existing studies. An

important note is that our focus is on empirically identiﬁed “best practices” and most

studies and reviews do not include implementation strategies as independent or mod-

erator variables. For example, the one meta-analysis of speciﬁcally character education

programs that we could ﬁnd, an unpublished master’s thesis, only looked at outcomes of

character education and did not examine differences in implementation methods (Berg,

2003).

Furthermore, triggered by an aphorism we often invoke during professional develop-

ment with educators, “good character education is good education,” we will examine

reviews of the impact of educational strategies on academic achievement in order to look

for such pedagogical similarities.

252 s M.W. Berkowitz and M.C. Bier

The character education reviews utilized here are Berkowitz and Bier’s (2005a) What

Works in Character Education (WWCE), Lovat, Toomey, Dally, and Clement’s (2009)

review of values education, and Durlak et al.’s (2011) meta-analysis of social-emotional

learning, along with Berkowitz’s (2011) updating of WWCE.

The civic/citizenship domain will be represented by the EPPI (2005) systematic review

of citizenship education. While this study focused on academic outcomes, it was a com-

prehensive review of outcome research and looked at implementation strategies.

The reviews focusing more broadly on academically successfully educational practices

are the cluster of work by Marzano (2003a, 2003b, 2007) and Hattie’s (2009) extensive

review of over 800 meta-analyses.

FRAMING WITH PRIME

In order to organize the results of the review of reviews, it is helpful to adopt a concep-

tual model of major character education strategies. Berkowitz (2009; cf. Berkowitz &

Bustamante, 2013) has proposed a ﬁve component model of optimal character educa-

tion implementation, called PRIME. The term refers to:

s Prioritization of character education in the educational setting. This emphasis

must be authentic, and ideally begins with the organizational leader (principal,

superintendent, etc.) and is school-wide.

s Relationships are the essential building blocks of character development and

optimal education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005b; Watson, 2003). They should be

proactively and strategically nurtured and this applies within and across all stake-

holder groups in the school or district.

s Intrinsic motivation should be the primary motivational and developmental

target of character education (Althof & Berkowitz, 2013). Conversely, modes of

extrinsic motivation should be minimized if not eliminated.

s Models of character should surround students. Primarily all adults in the

educational setting should model the character they want to see developing in

students.

s Empowerment of all stakeholders should be emphasized and strategically sup-

ported. Flattening governance structures, increasing democratic processes, and

generally making space for “voices” to be elicited, heard, and honored are core

aspects of this element.

The effective methods identiﬁed in the review will therefore, where appropriate, be

clustered under these ﬁve concepts. Additionally, where appropriate, aspects of the

Character Education Partnership’s Eleven Principles of Effective Character Education

(Lickona, Schaps, & Lewis, 2010) will be identiﬁed and related to speciﬁc elements

described below.

EFFECTIVE METHODS

Table 14.1 presents all the methods for which any of the seven reviews/meta-analyses report

empirical support. It also clusters them according to the ﬁve PRIME meta-strategies.

Table 14.1 Research-based Practices

Reviews WWCE WWCE+ Lovat CASEL EPPI Hattie Marzano

Outcome Char/Acad Character Values SEL/Academic Academic Academic Academic

Input Character Character Values SEL Citizenship Mixed Academic

METHODS

PRIORITIZATION Professional Development ¸¸ ¸

Common Language ¸

School-wide

Implementation

¸¸¸ ¸¸

RELATIONSHIPS Interactive pedagogy ¸¸¸¸ ¸ ¸¸

Family/Community

Partic.

¸¸¸ ¸

Building Trust ¸

Focus on relationships ¸

Nurturance ¸¸

INTRINSIC

MOTIVATION

Real/Relevant

curriculum

¸¸

Service to others ¸¸¸¸

Progressive Beh Mgmt. ¸¸ ¸

MODELING Modeling ¸¸¸

EMPOWERMENT Empowerment ¸¸

OTHER Direct instruction ¸¸¸¸

Inquiry-based education ¸¸

Recognition ¸¸

High expectations ¸¸¸

Safe Schools ¸

Reﬂection ¸¸

Notes

WWC: Berkowitz & Bier (2005a); WWCE: Berkowitz (2011); LOVAT: Lovat et al. (2009); CASEL: Durlak et al. (2011); EPPI: EPPI (2005); HATTIE: Hattie (2009); MARZANO (2003a,

2003b, 2007).

254 s M.W. Berkowitz and M.C. Bier

Prioritization

The importance of authentic prioritization of character education is represented by three

research-supported practices:

s PROFESSIONALDEVELOPMENT

s COMMONLANGUAGE

s SCHOOLWIDEEMPHASIS

Professional development. Professional development was reported as a research-

based practice by Berkowitz (2011), Berkowitz and Bier (2005a), and Hattie (2009).

Berkowitz and Bier reported that all 33 effective character education programs they

identiﬁed included professional development either as a mandatory component or as

an option. Hattie reports a meta-analysis by Timperley et al. (2007) which identiﬁed

seven characteristics of professional development that leads to student change, includ-

ing sustained training, training by outside experts, challenges to teachers’ current con-

cepts and language, teachers talking to teachers, and leadership support.

Common language. Lovat et al. (2009) were the only ones to speciﬁcally cite common

language as a best practice, “the use by teachers, students and often parents of this

common language not only led to greater understanding of the targeted values but

also provided a positive focus for reﬂecting on and redirecting children’s inappropriate

behaviour” (p. 33). Anecdotally schools frequently report a lack of common language as

an impediment to optimal implementation, or the development of shared language as

a tipping point in moving their initiative forward. Many research-supported programs

include their own terminology, often including a list of character outcomes. The Char-

acter Education Partnership (Beland, 2003; Character Education Partnership, 2010)

strongly encourages schools/districts to identify a set of core ethical values as the frame-

work and language upon which to build a comprehensive character education initiative.

The ﬁrst two principles focus almost exclusively on this approach.

School-wide emphasis. Making character education an organizational priority

includes implementing across the entire organization, rather than a single curricular

strand, for only some students, or in other ways as an isolated strategy. School-wide

implementation was reported by Berkowitz (2011), Berkowitz and Bier (2005a), Lovat

et al. (2009), Hattie (2009), and Marzano (2003a, 2003b, 2007). Lovat et al. (2009) actu-

ally identiﬁed a set of school-wide variables including incorporation in school policy

and discussion of values at school-wide assemblies. The Character Education Partner-

ship’s (2010) third principle emphasizes the comprehensive implementation of character

education across all school elements. Some effective character education programs expli-

citly include school-wide implementation emphasis (e.g., Caring School Community,

Developmental Studies Center, 1994). Berkowitz (2011; Berkowitz et al., 2012) has

further emphasized the critical role of school leadership in effective implementation.

Relationships

The promotion of relationships is an element in ﬁve evidence-based strategies:

s INTERACTIVEPEDAGOGY

s FAMILYANDORCOMMUNITYPARTICIPATION

s PROMOTINGTRUST

Research-Based Fundamentals for Character s 255

s DIRECTLYTARGETINGRELATIONSHIPS

s NURTURANCE

Interactive pedagogy. Berkowitz and Bier (2005a) identiﬁed this cluster of pedago-

gical strategies to be very common in effective character education programs. Such

methods focus on learning and development promoted through predominantly stu-

dent-to-student interactions. Interactive strategies include peer tutoring, cross-age

initiatives, cooperative learning, peer tutoring, etc. In fact, this was the only strategy

identiﬁed in all seven reviews. Durlak et al. (2011) focused on active learning, EPPI

(2005) on engagement and discussion, Lovat et al. (2009) on relational learning, Hattie

(2009) on relational learning and cooperative learning, and Marzano (2003a, 2003b,

2007) on relational learning, class meetings, and cooperative learning. Berkowitz and

Bier also identiﬁed a large set of studies demonstrating the impact of moral dilemma

discussion on the development of moral reasoning competencies.

Family and/or community participation. Applying a character education initiative

beyond the typical stakeholders in a school or district expands relationship-building to

a broader range of individuals and groups. Most commonly these are family members,

most notably parents of students, and other related community members (e.g., law

enforcement, local government, local businesses, etc.). Strategically encouraging such

extra-school relationships was identiﬁed as an effective practice by Berkowitz (2011),

Berkowitz and Bier (2005a), Lovat et al. (2009), and Marzano (2003a, 2007). In par-

ticular, Lovat et al. emphasized communication with families and Marzano emphasized

recognition of community members and inclusion of families in behavior management.

The Character Education Partnership’s (2010) 10th Principle supports engaging “families

and community members as partners.” Parental involvement in particular can be imple-

mented at many levels, from parent as audience to parent as client to the more desir-

able parent as partner (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005c). In the latter case, parents partner with

the school in designing, implementing, and/or evaluating character education. Santiago,

Ferrara, and Quinn (2012) offer an excellent model of comprehensive community-school

partnership combined with character education.

Trust. Whereas an intentional focus on building trust per se was identiﬁed only by

Berkowitz (2011), it has been a major focus of a set of disparate educational models of

relevance. It has been invoked as a critical element in school leadership in particular

(Tschannen-Moran, 2004) and the adult culture of a school (Bryk & Schneider, 2002) as

well as foundational for developmental discipline (Howes & Ritchie, 2002; Watson, 2003).

Relationship-building. Marzano (2003b) directly cites the strategic intentional fos-

tering of healthy relationships between student and teacher as one of the three aspects

of effective classroom management (along with rules/procedures and disciplinary inter-

ventions). Watson (2003) also includes this (along with student–student relationships

and using behavior incidents as opportunities for growth and learning) as the founda-

tion of developmental discipline. One rather unique and effective character education

program, Roots of Empathy, incorporates relationships at multiple levels by bringing a

mother and her infant, with a trained facilitator, to classrooms (Gordon, 2005), thereby

studying parent–infant relationships but also developing a relationship between the stu-

dents and visitors over repeated visits/lessons.

Nurturance. Despite the foundational importance of love/care in child develop-

ment, it is not widely studied in educational research. Berkowitz and Grych (1998,

256 s M.W. Berkowitz and M.C. Bier

2000) found it to be a key element in both parenting and teaching for character. Other

researchers have found this to be true in elementary school (Howe & Ritchie, 2003),

middle school (Wentzel, 2002) and high school (Gregory et al., 2010). A growing

body of educational theory and philosophy has also focused on an ethic of caring

(e.g., Noddings, 1992). Nevertheless, it was only cited in two of the reviews (Berkow-

itz, 2011; Marzano, 2007). Marzano speciﬁcally encourages “behaviors that indicate

affection for each student” (p. 155) such as greeting students at the door (cf. Urban,

2008).

Intrinsic Motivation

The internalization of motivation (Althof & Berkowitz, 2013; Streight, 2013) is a central

goal of developmental education, particularly developmental education focusing on the

development of pro-social characteristics. The Character Education Partnership’s (2010)

7th Principle is to foster self-motivation in students. This focus was manifested in the

reviews in three research-supported strategies:

s 2EALANDRELEVANTEDUCATION

s 3ERVICETOOTHERS

s 0ROGRESSIVEBEHAVIORMANAGEMENT

Real and relevant education. One way to promote the internalization of values and

motives is to make education personally meaningful for students. This strategy was

identiﬁed by both EPPI (2005) and Marzano (2003a, 2007).

Service to others. Another way to increase the likelihood that students will internalize

pro-social values is to provide for them the opportunity to serve others, something that

is common in character education. Service was identiﬁed by Berkowitz (2011), Berkow-

itz and Bier (2005a), Durlak et al. (2011), and Lovat et al. (2009). It is also the Character

Education Partnership’s (2010) 5th Principle. Service learning, in particular, links service

to others with the school’s curriculum, and this has been shown to impact both character

development and academic achievement (Billig, 2002).

Progressive behavior management. The concept of character education naturally

invokes student behavior, especially misbehavior, and hence interfaces frequently with

the challenge of managing student misbehavior in school settings. Despite the wealth

of data on ineffective behavior management techniques, most of which are based on an

extrinsic theory of behavior change (cf. Deci & Ryan, 2002), educators persist in relying

on such approaches (Berkowitz, 2012a; Streight, 2013), rather than on more progres-

sive approaches such as developmental discipline (Bear, 2005; Danforth & Smith, 2005;

Watson, 2003). Three of the reviews identiﬁed more progressive, developmental, and

intrinsically-based behavior management as an effective practice (Berkowitz, 2011;

Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a; Marzano, 2003a, 2003b, 2007).

Modeling

Developmental research has long supported the power of imitation and modeling in

child development. Three reviews reinforced this emphasis (Berkowitz, 2011; Berkowitz

& Bier, 2005a; Lovat et al., 2009). Ideally models are those with whom students have

healthy relationships (e.g., teachers). However, there may also be others in the com-

munity, historical ﬁgures, or even ﬁctional characters in the literature curriculum.

Research-Based Fundamentals for Character s 257

Empowerment

Given that a fundamental purpose of schooling, in democratic societies in particular, is

the socialization of youth as future citizens, creating schools that embody democratic

practices and principles is critical (Dewey, 1944). Berkowitz (2011, 2012b) has labeled

the general focus on empowering educational practices as a “pedagogy of empower-

ment” and it applies to all stakeholders in a school (administrators, teachers, support

staff, students, parents, etc.). Nonetheless, empowerment was identiﬁed only by Berkow-

itz (2011) and Marzano (2003a, 2003b, 2007) as an effective practice. Marzano (2007),

for example, identiﬁed student voice in setting learning goals and designing educational

tasks. Education tends toward hierarchical, authoritarian (albeit benevolent) approaches

and tends to strain against the authentic empowerment of stakeholders and the ﬂatten-

ing of governance structures (Berkowitz, 2012b).

Beyond PRIME

Six additional strategies that do not ﬁt clearly in any of the PRIME components were also

identiﬁed as research-supported practices.

Direct Instruction. It is not surprising that education for character includes teaching

about character. This tends to focus on teaching character concepts, such as virtues and

values that are often the most salient aspect of a school’s initiative. It may also focus on

examples (e.g., exemplars, role models) in the curriculum or supplemental to the cur-

riculum. Four of the reviews identiﬁed some form of direct instruction as an effective

practice. This approach was either direct instruction about character (Berkowitz, 2011;

Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a) or values (Lovat et al., 2009) or instruction in social-emotional

competencies (Berkowitz, 2011; Durlak et al., 2011).

Inquiry-based Learning. The two reviews of speciﬁcally academic-focused strategies

(Hattie, 2009; Marzano, 2007) both identiﬁed inquiry-based learning as an effective

practice. While such approaches have been used effectively in character education (e.g.,

Berger, 2003), they tend not to be included in research studies of character education

programs and methods.

Recognition. Marzano (2003a, 2003b, 2007) explicitly recommends recognition of

achievement as an effective strategy.

Expectations. Setting high expectations is a core element of both parenting for

(Berkowitz & Grych, 1998) and educating for (Berkowitz & Grych, 2000; Wentzel, 2002)

character development, but it is not studied widely in the literature and hence was only

identiﬁed by Berkowitz (2011) and Marzano (2003a, 2003b, 2007). Merely setting high

expectations, however, is not likely to be adequate, as supportive conditions need to be

in place along with pedagogies that scaffold students’ underdeveloped competencies to

allow them to achieve excellent performance (Berger, 2003; Turner & Berkowitz, 2005;

Urban, 2008). This includes setting clear expectations, checking in on progress, allowing

multiple attempts at success, offering constructive feedback, allowing play relevant to the

task, etc.

Safe Schools. Despite all the emphasis on school safety (e.g., bullying, violence pre-

vention) and the fact that the major US Department of Education division charged

with character, civics, and social emotional learning is the Ofﬁce of Safe and Drug Free

Schools, only one review identiﬁed school safety as a best practice, and it was not one

of the character-focused reviews, but rather Marzano’s (2003a) review of best academic

258 s M.W. Berkowitz and M.C. Bier

practices. In a study of academic outcomes of character education, Benninga, Berkowitz,

Kuehn, and Smith (2003) found safe and clean schools to be a clear predictor of aca-

demic achievement.

Reﬂection. Reﬂection is an excellent means of promoting and sustaining understand-

ing and retention, and this applies to both academic learning (Marzano, 2003a, 2003b,

2007) and character development (Lovat et al., 2009).

ACADEMIC VS. CHARACTER/VALUES/CIVICS PRACTICES

One of the more frequently asked questions is whether those reviews that focused on

academic achievement (EPPI, 2005; Hattie, 2009; Marzano, 2003a, 2003b, 2007) identi-

ﬁed different effective practices than did those focusing speciﬁcally on character, values,

social-emotional, or citizenship outcomes (Berkowitz, 2011; Berkowitz & Bier, 2005a;

Durlak et al., 2011; Lovat et al., 2009). It is important to note that this dichotomy is far

from pure. Berkowitz and Bier included academic achievement as an outcome variable,

Durlak et al. focused heavily on academic outcome variables, EPPI examined citizenship

programs but only looked at academic outcomes, and Hattie’s review of meta-analyses

included character and related programs (see Table 14.1). Nonetheless, the emphases

are distinguishable and the studies reviewed varied widely depending on the primary

emphasis of the review.

Despite the differential emphasis on academic versus developmental outcomes, the

vast majority of practices were cited in both academic-focused and character-focused

studies. It was our belief that “good character education is good education” that led to

the initial inclusion of those academic reviews in this analysis. This intuition was vindi-

cated by the results. Of the 19 practices identiﬁed (see Table 14.1), 12 were cited in both

academic-focused and character-focused reviews. Given the fact that three of the reviews

were more academic in focus and four were more character-focused, it is not surprising

that more of the non-overlapping practices were cited by the character reviews.

There were six practices that were cited only by one or more of the character reviews:

direct teaching; setting learning goals; using common language; modeling; service; trust.

Interestingly, the ﬁrst two could be argued to be more academic in focus, yet they were

only cited by character-focused reviews. In a similarly counter-intuitive fashion, only

one practice was cited only by academic-focused reviews. Marzano (2003a), the most

purely academic-focused review, was the only study to cite safe schools, which can be

argued to be more closely aligned with character concepts (Benninga et al., 2003).

CONCLUSION

Sufﬁcient research has been amassed to allow for the examination of best practices in

character education, and related ﬁelds such as values, citizenship, and social-emotional

learning. Furthermore, the overlap in these domains of outcomes and methods with

studies of best academic achievement practices allows for the examination of an even

larger body of research. In so doing, this review has looked at seven research reviews/

meta-analyses of relevance and has identiﬁed 19 research-based practices for both pro-

moting academic achievement and character development.

Interestingly, the practices that promote academic achievement and character educa-

tion are predominantly overlapping, and when they are not, the differences are both

Research-Based Fundamentals for Character s 259

counter-intuitive and probably artifactual of the variables of focus in particular studies

or areas of research.

This set of practices provides a broad-based and research-driven foundation for

building effective schools, districts, and classrooms for both the promotion of academic

achievement and for fostering the development of character, values, citizenship, and

social-emotional maturity.

NOTES

* The authors would like to thank the John Templeton Foundation, SD Bechtel Foundation, and Harry S.

Singer Foundation for their support of this work.

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Part III

Schools-Based Best Practices

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263

PEDAGOGY FOR THE WHOLE CHILD

The Developmental Studies Center’s Approach to Academic, Moral,

and Character Education

Peter Brunn

The most reliable way to improve schools is to improve curriculum and instruction and to

improve the conditions in which teachers work and children learn, rather than endlessly

squabbling over how school systems should be organized, managed, and controlled.

(Ravitch, 2010)

In many ways it seems as if we have been arguing about what and how teachers

should teach since the turn of the last century (Kleibard, 1995). Today, we are

dealing with the effects of the past decade of the No Child Left Behind legislation

while diving headﬁrst into the age of the Common Core State Standards. We hear

politicians bark, see districts react, and feel the impact of teachers and children left

in the middle trying to ﬁgure out how to make sense of it all. At the Developmental

Studies Center (DSC), we have spent the past 33 years struggling with how to help

schools navigate these turbulent waters. We researched how to best support the

academic, social, and ethical development of our young people. We investigated how

to foster children into the principled, thoughtful, engaged adults we hope them to

become.

In the ﬁrst edition of this book, my late colleague Vic Battistich described the

origins and evolution of the Child Development Project (CDP), DSC’s ﬁrst endeavor

to support student’s positive social, moral, and academic development. (Battistich,

2008). This chapter picks up where Vic left off by tracing the pedagogical develop-

ment of DSC into a broader and more expansive model of instruction. What we have

developed as a result of this journey represents a path schools can take to support the

full needs—academic, social, and emotional—of the children they serve.

264 s P. Brunn

A PORTRAIT OF OUR STUDENTS

At the writing of this chapter, 45 states have adopted the Common Core State Stand-

ards (CCSS) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of

Chief State School Ofﬁcers, 2010). With so many states adopting, and with such high

stakes tied to their implementation, any discussion of teaching and learning must cer-

tainly include mention of them. While controversy surrounds how these standards will

be implemented and assessed, one of the helpful elements they provide is a compelling

portrait of the learner who is college and career ready. The standards state that, “As stu-

dents advance through the grades and master the standards in reading, writing, speaking,

listening, and language, they are able to exhibit with increasing fullness and regularity

these capacities of the literate individual” (National Governors Association Center for

Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Ofﬁcers, 2010). Through mastery of the

standards students:

s $EMONSTRATEINDEPENDENCE

s "UILDSTRONGCONTENTKNOWLEDGE

s 2ESPONDTOTHEVARYINGDEMANDSOFAUDIENCETASKPURPOSEANDDISCIPLINE

s #OMPREHENDASWELLASCRITIQUE

s 6ALUEEVIDENCE

s 5SETECHNOLOGYANDDIGITALMEDIASTRATEGICALLYANDCAPABLY

s #OMETOUNDERSTANDOTHERPERSPECTIVESANDCULTURES

While these are certainly valuable skills that are necessary for twenty-ﬁrst century jobs,

this portrait seems incomplete if we are to truly support our children as they grow into

adults. To capture a more comprehensive portrait of our students, my colleagues and I

often begin our work with teachers with a visualization activity. We have them picture

the young girl jumping rope in the schoolyard, or the boy who comes in to class a few

minutes late every day. We then ask them to project that image forward 15 years or so

and try to see that student as a community member, neighbor, soldier, manager, lawyer,

health worker, politician, and parent. Then we ask them to create a picture of the skills,

qualities, and traits that student needs to possess, in order to be ready to tackle the

myriad roles and responsibilities they will inhabit. The list often contains words from

the CCSS portrait above, but it also contains words such as, empathetic, caring,

resourceful, engaged, principled, focused, passionate, gritty, creative, reﬂective, hard

working, problem solver, resilient, etc. This picture represents a more complete hope-

ﬁlled representation of our future. This image serves as a beacon keeping the work we

do in schools focused on the ultimate outcomes we desire.

Teachers are ultimately responsible for both images from above. They need to ensure

students master the rigorous academic standards, but they also need to help them develop,

the other, what the author Paul Tough calls “non-cognitive” skills (Tough, 2012). More-

over, these skills are essential for students’ eventual success in life. Our emotions, skills,

EXPERIENCESANDKNOWLEDGEALLWORKTOGETHERINONEPACKAGE5NFORTUNATELYINMANY

settings these non-cognitive skills are not nurtured together but seen as separate discrete

things. This is problematic because it is not like students leave their emotions on the shelf

above the coat rack outside the classroom. Instead, they come into our rooms as whole

bodies possessing full hearts and minds. Supporting and nourishing the whole child

Pedagogy for the Whole Child s 265

must therefore be at the heart of the work of schools. Since its inceptions, the Devel-

opmental Studies Center has focused our research, teacher professional development,

and curriculum development on this mission—fostering students’ academic, social, and

ethical development.

NOURISHING THE HEART AND MIND

This concept of educating the “Whole Child” is not a new one. John Dewey was arguing

for something similar in the early stages of the last century (Dewey, 1938). More recently,

the inﬂuential non-proﬁt organization ASCD launched the Whole Child Initiative in

2007. This ambitious initiative deﬁnes this work as, “Each child, in each school, in each of

our communities deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. That’s

what a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement really

is” (ASCD, n.d., “The Whole Child”). Due to ASCD’s efforts there are signs that policy

makers are beginning to lend their support for this effort. In Arkansas, for example, the

governor recently signed a bill into law promoting Whole Child Education (ASCD, n.d.,

“Arkansas Governor Beebe Signs . . .”).

In addition to the work above, there is also a growing body of research demonstrating

that expanding schools’ focus to include social and emotional learning greatly beneﬁts

student development (Thapa, Cohen, Guffey, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2013). Indeed

there is evidence that students actually increase academic achievement because of this

implementation of SEL programs (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger,

2011).

The difﬁcult thing for schools is not deciding whether or not to include social and

emotional learning with the academic curriculum. The challenge is trying to ﬁgure out

how to do it.

PEDAGOGY FOR THE WHOLE CHILD

DSC’s pedagogy, which integrates academic and social development into curricula for

teachers, was formed over the past 33 years of research and experience in schools. It has

its roots in DSC’s ﬁrst program the Child Development Project (CDP) but has evolved

greatly since then. This evolution of our pedagogy comes from close analysis of our own

work in schools as well as the context schools are working under.

As we examined the data from our six-district study of CDP for example (Solomon,

Battistich, Watson, Schaps, & Lewis, 2000), we learned that while there were positive

program effects in the high change schools, effects that persisted even into middle school

(Battistich, Schaps, & Wilson, 2004), we were still frustrated that the program was not

more fully implemented by all of the schools in the study. Additionally because of the

pressures of testing and of high stakes accountability (especially after the 2001 passage

of the No Child Left Behind Legislation) we have seen a reduction of class time for any-

THINGOTHERTHANWHATISTESTED$ARLING(AMMOND2AVITCH4HUSINMANY

schools teachers don’t feel they have the license to focus on the social and emotional

development of children.

A review of our own research by DSC’s founder Eric Schaps led us to believe we needed

to revise our current offerings and expand programming into the most focused upon

academic subject area of schooling—literacy. In his review Dr. Schaps found that a

266 s P. Brunn

revised CDP program, with its expanded reading-skills instruction, will be more

responsive to students’ academic needs and more feasible for a wide range of schools

to implement. And we believe it will continue to enhance students’ sense of com-

munity in school and to yield the wide-ranging, enduring beneﬁts that follow from

such a focus.

(Schaps, Battistich, & Solomon, 2004)

Because of this and other analyses, DSC revised CDP and created new reading and

writing programs.

Our current programming now includes a reading comprehension program Making

Meaning: Strategies that Build Comprehension and Community (Developmental Studies

#ENTERA WRITING PROGRAM Being a Writer: Craft, Conventions and Community

(Developmental Studies Center, 2007), and a classroom and schoolwide community

building program, Caring School Community (Developmental Studies Center, 2009) (this

is a revised version of CDP). Taken together these programs illuminate a path schools

can take to focus on educating the whole child. The core principles of the pedagogy

(which is contained in the programs above) provide schools with a blueprint for deep-

ening academic learning while supporting students’ prosocial development. These core

principles are:

s !CARINGSAFEANDSUPPORTIVELEARNINGCOMMUNITY

s !CADEMICINSTRUCTIONISINTEGRATEDWITHSOCIALANDETHICALLEARNING

s 3TUDENTSAREINTRINSICALLYMOTIVATED

s ,EARNINGSITUATIONSAREORGANIZEDFORSTUDENTSTODOTHETHINKING

A Caring, Safe, and Supportive Learning Community

There is much evidence that creating a safe and supportive community provides enormous

BENElTSFORCHILDRENBOTHSOCIALLYANDACADEMICALLY$URLAKETAL3CHAPS

Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, 2004). School climate also plays a critical role

in why some schools are more successful than others (Voight, Austin, & Hanson, 2013).

When students experience school as a safe and supportive place they reap some powerful

outcomes including:

s 2EDUCEDAGGRESSIVENESSVIOLENCEDELINQUENCYANDDRUGANDALCOHOLUSE

s )NCREASEDSOCIALCOMPETENCEANDPOSITIVEBEHAVIOR

s -ORECONCERNFOROTHERS

s 3TRONGERCONNECTIONTOSCHOOLANDHIGHEREDUCATIONALASPIRATIONS

s )NCREASEDACADEMICMOTIVATIONANDACHIEVEMENT

(Learning First Alliance, 2001)

An evaluation of DSC’s community building program Caring School Community (Mar-

shall & Caldwell, 2007) found similar results. In that study the program schools

showed:

s 3AFERLEARNINGCOMMUNITIES

s )NCREASEDSTAFFCOLLABORATION

s )MPROVEDCLASSROOMSTRATEGIES

Pedagogy for the Whole Child s 267

s )MPROVEDSTUDENTDISCIPLINE

s )MPROVEDACADEMICACHIEVEMENT

In our work with schools DSC builds caring safe and supportive environments through

the following ways.

Teambuilding Activities—Each year begins with teambuilding activities that get stu-

dents talking and interacting with one another. These activities are designed to help stu-

dents get to know each other, bring students together around a common purpose, and

start the process for building a caring community. Activities help students:

s ,EARNEACHOTHERSNAMES

s 'ETTOKNOWONEANOTHER

s 3TAYCONNECTEDWITHONEANOTHER

Teambuilders might be done after long breaks, when new students arrive in the class-

room, or when seating arrangements change.

Class Meetings—This is the core component of the program. Through class meetings

students can plan for upcoming events or make decisions on how certain classroom

activities might be run. They are also valuable places for students to solve problems and

handle conﬂict. Class meeting topics might include but are not limited to:

s 0REPARINGFORANEWSTUDENTORAGUESTTEACHER

s 0LANNINGASTUDYTRIP

s 3ETTINGCLASSROOMNORMS

s $ISCUSSINGBULLYINGTEASINGANDlGHTING

s $ISCUSSINGPLAYGROUNDCHALLENGES

Cross-Age Buddies Program—Our buddies program helps build caring relationships

across a school. These may be academic or recreational activities. The activity helps

older and younger students take a responsibility for their role in the relationship and

teaches them valuable interaction skills.

Homeside Activities—This collection of activities is designed to stimulate conversa-

tions between the students and their family and to connect home and school. Every

activity begins in the classroom, continues at home, and then ends back in the classroom.

The activities are designed to give students an opportunity to share their school lives

with their family and their family life with the school.

Schoolwide Community Building Activities—This component helps link the students,

parents, teachers, and other adults in the school. The activities focus on building rela-

tionships and reinventing traditional schoolwide activities.

Taken together, these program components help teachers establish a caring climate

for their students. They also provide the opportunity for students to learn valuable social

skills necessary to grow and interact with one another.

Academic Instruction is Integrated with Social and Ethical Learning

DSC’s curriculum is designed around the idea that social and academic development are

interconnected. In a typical day in school, students have to negotiate with each other in

a wide variety of circumstances. They work together constructing a science experiment,

268 s P. Brunn

sharing math manipulatives, discussing books with partners, and growing new ideas for

their writing. All of these subject areas lend themselves to explicit teaching of social skills

and are full of opportunities for reﬂection on behavior. Moreover, integrating social and

academic development provides students with the opportunity to develop their social

skills in the context of their academic work. This provides authentic reasons to teach,

reinforce, and reﬂect on the social skills students need to work in groups, in pairs, and

to share their thinking in whole class settings. The researchers Stephanie Jones and

Suzanne Bouffard have postulated that social and emotional learning done in isolation

only has had generally modest effects. Integrating social and emotional learning into the

academic curricula may be necessary in order for SEL to have a signiﬁcant impact on

student development (Jones & Bouffard, 2012).

Integrating this work, however, needs careful planning in order to be thoughtfully

integrated into the curriculum (Brunn, 2010). In our lessons we suggest teachers do this

in three key ways:

s Ensure lessons have both social and academic goals—Most programs contain

learning objectives. These are essential to planning effective instruction. We take

this a step further. In addition to having academic objectives, our lessons also

include social objectives. In a reading lesson, for example, an academic objective

students have might be using evidence from the text to justify their opinions about

what was read. The social focus for the same lesson might involve students using

prompts to learn to agree and disagree respectfully.

s Add partner work and group work when appropriate for the academic activity—

Not every lesson has places for students to interact or opportunities for them to work

on social skills. If we want students to see the efﬁcacy of the social skills they are

learning, then they need authentic opportunities to use them. In the example above,

the teacher knows that if students are learning to justify opinions using textual evid-

ence, then there will be opportunities for students to challenge each other’s thinking.

This text talk provides the opportunity to not only deepen the academic learning, but

also provides a real context to learn how to agree and disagree respectfully.

s Structure lessons to include social skill instruction and reﬂection—Having a

predictable time in each lesson to teach or reinforce a social skill ensures that

social and emotional learning does not get pushed out of the curriculum. With so

much content to cover, teachers feel pressed to get the entire curriculum covered

causing social development to be left out (Jones & Bouffard, 2012). We structure

our lessons so that the ﬁrst part of every lesson either introduces a social skill or

reinforces a skill that has already been taught. At the conclusion of each lesson, the

teacher then asks students to reﬂect on how it went that day (Schaps & Brunn,

2008). So if they are working on the social objective agreeing or disagreeing

respectfully, the teacher might ask, “What was challenging about having a different

opinion than the group (or their partner).” Or, they might ask, “What worked

today when we tried using our prompts?”

Having intentional social goals allows us to scaffold students learning over time. We can

introduce the appropriate social skills when they are most relevant in the curriculum.

Students see the utility of using the skills instead of de-contextualized skills learned in

isolation.

Pedagogy for the Whole Child s 269

Intrinsically Motivated Students

Anyone who has ever assigned a piece of writing to students knows how important intrinsic

motivation is. The writing of a student who is simply going through the motions, just to

comply with the teacher’s requirement looks much different than the writing from a student

who is committed to expressing her idea and actively trying to move the reader. Intrinsic

motivation is therefore an essential part of DSC’s work in schools. It is critical because, as

Larry Ferlazzo relates, “This kind of motivation drives students to put effort into learning

because they see that it will help them achieve their personal goals” (Ferlazzo, 2013, p. 3).

It can be tough for teachers to embrace the idea that, no matter how good their lessons

ARETHESTUDENTDECIDESWHATWHENANDIFTHEYWILLLEARNTHEDESIREDCONTENT4HELEARN-

ing happens within the child. Intrinsic motivation has a great deal to do with this. Luckily,

there is much schools can do to impact the level of their students’ internal motivation.

We have learned that when students’ basic needs for autonomy, belonging, and com-

PETENCEAREMETTHEIRLEVELOFENGAGEMENTRISES$ECI6ALLERAND0ELLETIER2YAN

Schaps et al., 2004). At DSC we attempt to meet these needs in the following ways:

s !UTONOMY)N READING FOR EXAMPLE STUDENTS GET TO CHOOSE BOOKS BY FAVORITE

authors and in genres they have strong interest in reading. In writing, students

learn to choose their own topic, formulate their unique opinions, and get to share

their writing in meaningful purposeful ways. In DSC classrooms, students also

have a voice in solving classroom problems while getting opportunities to plan key

events and making decisions on classroom procedures.

s "ELONGING4HROUGHTEAMBUILDINGCLASSMEETINGSBUDDIESACTIVITIESANDLOTSOF

opportunities to interact with classmates in academic lessons, students develop a

sense of connectedness to school.

s #OMPETENCE"YPROVIDINGANENGAGINGANDDEVELOPMENTALLYAPPROPRIATECURRIC-

ulum, students get opportunities to develop skills, and to challenge themselves.

Learning Situation Organized For Students to do the Thinking

John Dewey once asked, “How many students, for example, were rendered callous to

ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was

experienced by them?” (Dewey, 1938, p. 15). Even though he wrote this almost 75 years

ago, the question seems appropriate even for today’s students. The fact still remains that

how students experience the instruction in our classrooms makes an enormous differ-

ence in their engagement and in their learning.

If we are to shift students from the passive role of receiver of information, and toward

an active role of investigator, then teachers must shift their teaching “stance” (Brunn, 2010,

p. 72). This shift in stance involves moving into the role of facilitator of student thinking.

When student thinking is put at the center of our instruction, it means that teachers talk less

and students talk, write, and do more. The facilitator’s role involves doing the following:

s ,ISTENINGCAREFULLYTOSTUDENTTHINKING

s !SKINGOPENENDEDQUESTIONS

s 5SINGCOOPERATIVESTRUCTURES

s 0ROBINGSTUDENTTHINKING

s 5TILIZINGWAITTIME

s 5SINGNONJUDGMENTALRESPONSES

270 s P. Brunn

In addition to the points above, supporting student thinking means valuing mistakes. If

we are doing our job as facilitators, we are presenting many challenging and complex

problems and ideas for students to wrestle with. This means that they will make lots of

mistakes. These mistakes are essential for student success in school. As Eleanor Duckworth

says, “What you do about what you don’t know is, in the ﬁnal analysis, what determines

what you will ultimately know” (Duckworth E., 1987, p. 68).

The challenge, however, is that most students do not value mistakes. In most schools only

right answers count. Many of us suffer from this ﬁxed mindset and carry with us the notion

that making mistakes is somehow wrong (Dweck, 2006). If, however, we are to put student

thinking at the center of our lessons, then we must change this paradigm in our class-

rooms. We need to set up experiences where students struggle and have to work through

that struggle. There is evidence that students beneﬁt greatly from persevering through dif-

ﬁcult mistakes and working on a problem over time. Staying with a difﬁcult task may be

what separates students who excel and those who don’t. Angela Duckworth calls this trait

“grit” (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007).

The programs at DSC are designed to support teachers in shifting into the stance of a

facilitator. We have found that with scaffolded materials support along with in-classroom

professional development, teachers can put student thinking at the center of their

instruction.

CONCLUSION

Since 1980, the Developmental Studies Center has developed programs, and conducted

professional development in schools across the country in order to better foster students’

academic, social, and ethical development. We know that attending to the needs of the

whole child is an essential yet difﬁcult task in the tempest of today’s educational climate.

But, as we have shown in this chapter, there is overwhelming evidence that creating safe

and supportive environments, and integrating social and emotional development into

academic instruction, signiﬁcantly beneﬁts students. We have also shown that there are

concrete steps schools can take to do this work.

We know this will be challenging. This is especially true as districts develop and imple-

ment new teacher evaluation systems, and as they implement the new Common Core

State Standards assessments. In order to best meet the needs of their students it will be

imperative that school leaders stay the course outlined here and not marginalize social

and emotional learning.

This can be done through the careful selection of educational materials and continued

support of job-embedded professional development for teachers. Through the use of

reﬂective, teacher-led models of professional development, school systems can empower

teachers to be more responsive to their students and better prepared to support their

social and academic development.

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272

THE COMPLEMENTARY PERSPECTIVES OF SOCIAL

AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING, MORAL EDUCATION,

AND CHARACTER EDUCATION

Maurice J. Elias, Amy Kranzler, Sarah J. Parker, V. Megan Kash,

and Roger P. Weissberg

Anyone can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right

degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way—this is not easy.

Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV, Section 5

Aristotle’s words suggest that humans have long been interested in how best to manage

their emotional and social lives. Most recognize that their emotional reactions to events

have signiﬁcant impact on their social interactions and effectiveness. Many have con-

sidered the question of how individuals or groups of individuals might acquire more

effective ways of regulating their emotional responses and/or social relations. Others

prefer to frame the question in terms of how individuals or groups learn to guide their

behavior in correct or virtuous ways. Many have looked to traditional educational

environments as places to make progress towards these aims. Indeed, as one of the

primary cultural institutions responsible for transmitting information and values from

one generation to the next, schools have typically been involved in attending to the

social-emotional well being and moral direction of their students, in addition to their

intellectual achievements.

Not surprisingly, moral education (along with its close cousin, character education)

and social-emotional learning (SEL) have emerged as two prominent formal approaches

used in schools to provide guidance for students’ behavior. Moral education focuses on

values and social-emotional learning focuses on the skills and attitudes needed to func-

tion in relevant social environments. Pedagogically, the two approaches have come to

differ more in practice than in their deeper conceptualizations. Moral education has

focused more on the power of “right thinking” and “knowing the good,” and social-

emotional learning has focused more on the power of problem solving (Elias et al., 1997;

Huitt, 2004). Both, however, in their most discerning theorists and practitioners, have

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 273

recognized the role of affect (Lemerise & Arsenio, 2000; Nucci, 2001). Now that research

has caught up with this observational and intuitive understanding, both approaches are

converging toward a central pedagogy involving the coordination of affect, behavior, and

cognition and the role of the ecological-developmental context.

Paradoxically, moral education and social-emotional learning are values-neutral

approaches to aspects of socialization. Acknowledging the role of context brings to vis-

ibility the elephant in the room in discussions of moral education, which is the source

of moral authority or direction. This is an arena in which individuals and groups are

going to disagree. However, from the perspective of America’s public, secular educa-

tion system in a nation committed to democratic principles, there are sets of values and

moral principles that can be seen as consensual. Dewey has written about these with

particular eloquence. And Nucci (2001) has found that even among religious children of

different denominations, there is a consensus about moral values that transcend religion

and degree of belief (e.g., most children would believe that stealing is wrong even if G-d

commanded people to steal).

Yet, as it is said, the devil is in the details. What exactly constitutes “stealing”? Taking

a friend’s pencil and not returning it? Grabbing an apple from an open marketplace to

bring home to your siblings when your family is hungry? Copying from a neighbor’s test

paper? More difﬁcult in many cases is deﬁning the positive value. What is “honesty”?

Always saying the truth, all the time? Telling a hospitalized person how lousy they look?

Pointing out to a classmate who has a problem with an activity in gym that he has not

succeeded on 10 consecutive trials? Walking into class and telling the teacher you did not

do the assigned reading?

Gather a group of educators or parents into groups and ask each member of each

group to think about one child they know well. Ask the ﬁrst group to think about a child

who is highly responsible. Ask the next one to think about a child who is respectful. Have

members of the third group think about one who is honest. Have the ﬁnal group think

about a young person that they would say is an exemplary citizen in their school or com-

munity (or if you are able to explain this without “giving away the answer,” family). Ask

them to picture the child they are thinking about and then write down and/or discuss

what is it about that child that has earned the label of responsible, respectful, and so on,

in their eyes. Tell them that you are not interested in an abstract list, but things speciﬁc

to the child they are envisioning. And then have each group come up with a consensus

statement containing their observations.

When one leads a discussion and puts each group’s responses on pieces of newsprint

(yes, we will be honest, we really mean large sheets of post-it pad paper) for all to see,

a pattern invariably emerges and participants realize that to enact any of these cher-

ished values and attributes, one needs a large number of skills. Responsibility involves

time and task management and tracking and organization; respect involves empathy and

social approach behaviors; honesty involves self-awareness and communication skills;

good citizenship involves problem solving, decision-making, and conﬂict resolution, as

well as group and teamwork skills. And many of the skills cross-cut areas, such as the

need for clear communication in citizenship and interpersonal sensitivity in responsib-

ility. Indeed, there are instances in which children will “want to do the right thing” but

either will not know how or do not believe they can do so successfully.

Efforts at moral and character education, however their objectives may be deﬁned,

are designed to inform behavior. Enacting their principles requires skills (Berkowitz &

274 s M.J. Elias et al.

Bier, 2005). Berman (1997) has framed this by deﬁning skills that he believes are essential

for the development of social consciousness necessary to live effectively as an engaged

citizen in the modern world; Dalton, Wandersman, and Elias (2007) have identiﬁed a

similar set of cross-cultural “participatory competencies.” These are the speciﬁc cogni-

tive, behavioral, and affective skills needed to effectively enact key roles in a given social

context. Lickona and Davidson (2005) have made explicit what has been implicit, or

at least not featured, within character education, by articulating a distinction between

moral and performance character. It is their way of codifying that “doing the good” does

not follow automatically from “knowing the good.” Most current writings about moral

education and social-emotional learning are aligned with these prevailing notions.

As moral and character education and social-emotional learning move toward what

we believe is an inexorable and long-overdue convergence, having a sense of the trajec-

tory of the SEL side should help practitioners, theorists, and researchers appreciate and

put to better use the assets and limitations of the ﬁeld. Because much has been written

about the evolution of moral and character education (e.g., Lickona, 1976, 1991; Nucci,

1989; Wynne & Ryan, 1997; this volume), the following will emphasize the develop-

ment of SEL and elucidate its underlying bases. Again, it must be noted that in contexts

with differing sources of moral authority, focal values and requisite social-emotional

skills might vary from those that will be the implicit focus here. The considerations we

present are relevant across particular sets of moral principles or interpersonal skills. In

subsequent sections, we present thoughts about the implications of this background for

linkages with moral and character education.

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING (SEL)

Traditional views of the development and evaluation of SEL point to some of the ﬁrst

known writings about social and emotional skills (e.g., Aristotle’s The Nicomachean

Ethics [Goleman, 1995], as quoted above) and the increasing amount of interest and

research on social and/or emotional intelligences over the past 150 years. They typic-

ally begin with Darwin’s exploration of the importance of emotion in evolution, in The

Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Goleman, 1995; Mayer, 2001). They

also usually cite Thorndike’s proposal of a “social intelligence” component—an ability to

comprehend others and relate to them effectively—to overall intelligence (Elias, 2001),

although proponents did not ﬁnd much subsequent support for Thorndike’s ideas.

Sternberg’s work (1985) on what he then referred to as “practical intelligence” found

more empirical support for such a concept, and Gardner’s research (1993) on multiple

intelligences delineated and supported two distinct and related components relevant to

our discussion—intrapersonal (emotional) and interpersonal (social) intelligences. The

Consortium on the School-based Promotion of Social Competence (1994) emphasized

the importance of integrating cognition, affect, and behavior to address developmental

and contextual challenges and tasks. Prior to this point, the study of intelligence, emotion,

and social relations tended to be separate; with Sternberg and Gardner’s work, it became

clear that these phenomena were related to one another (Mayer, 2001), although others

(e.g., Piaget and Dewey) had noted these interrelationships much earlier.

By the late 1980s, much evidence supported the idea of integrated social and emo-

tional skills. Mayer and Salovey played a seminal role in rigorously deﬁning and ﬁnding

empirical support for “emotional intelligence,” as it is understood currently. In the ﬁrst

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 275

half of the 1990s, they produced a series of reviews and studies that presented support for

emotional intelligence, provided a strict deﬁnition for the construct and a measure for

assessing it, and demonstrated its validity and reliability as an intelligence (Mayer, 2001).

Goleman popularized the concept and added some social components to the deﬁnition

in his book, Emotional Intelligence (1995). Shortly thereafter, Reuven Bar-On’s (Bar-On,

Maree, & Elias, 2007) extensive work in deﬁning and assessing emotional intelligence

came to prominence. Table 16.1 contains a summary of the way in which these founders

of SEL deﬁned the key skills and attitudes comprising the construct.

In a parallel track, educators were becoming increasingly interested in applying the

ideas of social and emotional intelligence in educational environments. John Dewey

(1933) was among the ﬁrst to propose that empathy and effective interpersonal man-

agement are important skills to be conveyed and practiced in the educational environ-

ment. It was not until the early 1990s, however—contemporaneous with the work of

Mayer and Salovey—that the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learn-

ing (CASEL) (2005) was founded to apply the construct of emotional intelligence and its

related theory, research, and practice to schools and education.

As Zins, Elias, and Greenberg (2007) explain, the term “social-emotional learning”

was derived from a journey that has been driven by concepts, research, and practice. It

began with a shift in thinking from prevention of mental illness, behavioral-emotional

disorders, and problem behaviors as a goal and moved toward the broader goal of pro-

moting social competence. Looking at the prior literature on social competence, the skills

needed for sound functioning in schools, and at the emerging research on the importance

of emotions, CASEL drew on Goleman’s (1995) formulation of key SEL skill clusters and

expanded them (Table 16.1). Indeed, in selecting the name, “social and emotional learn-

ing,” CASEL recognized that it was essential to capture the aspect of education that links

academic achievement with the skills necessary for succeeding in school, in the family,

in the community, in the workplace, and in life in general. Equipped with such skills,

attitudes, and beliefs, young people are more likely to make healthy, caring, ethical, and

responsible decisions, and to avoid engaging in behaviors with negative consequences

such as interpersonal violence, substance abuse, and bullying (Elias et al. 1997; Lemerise

& Arsenio, 2000).

Such learning is important to students because emotions affect how and what they

learn, and caring relationships provide a foundation for deep, lasting learning (Elias et

al. 1997). In a climate of ever-growing concern about academic achievement, attend-

ing to emotions was emerging as a matter of at least as great an emphasis as cognition

and behavior. In a landmark book that brought together the research evidence about

SEL and academic success from all ﬁelds, Zins, Weissberg, Wang, and Walberg (2004)

concluded that successful academic performance by students depends on (a) students’

social-emotional skills for participatory competence, (b) their approaching education

with a sense of positive purpose, and (c) the presence of safe, supportive classroom and

school climates that foster respectful, challenging, and engaging learning communities. It

is the totality of these conditions and the processes they imply that are now best referred

to collectively as social-emotional learning, rather than continuing to view SEL as linked

entirely, or even mainly, to a set of skills.

The logic model behind this view, in simpliﬁed form, is that (a) students become open

to learning in environments that are respectful, orderly, safe, academically challeng-

ing, caring, involving/engaging, and well-managed, (b) effective SEL-related programs

276 s M.J. Elias et al.

Table 16.1 Primary Conceptualizations of Social-Emotional Learning/Emotional Intelligence Skills

The Salovey and Mayer (Brackett and Geher, 2006) approach to emotional intelligence:

1. Accurately perceive emotions in oneself and others and in one’s ambient context.

2. Use emotions to facilitate thinking or that might inhibit clear thinking and task performance.

3. Understand emotional meanings and how emotional reactions change over time and in response to

other emotions.

4. Effectively manage emotions in themselves and in others (“social management”).

Bar-On et al.’s ﬁve key components (2007):

1. Be aware of, understand, and express our emotions and feelings non-destructively.

2. Understand how others feel and to use this information to relate with them.

3. Manage and control emotions so they work for us and not against us.

4. Manage change, and adapt and solve problems of a personal and interpersonal nature.

5. Generate positive affect to be self-motivated.

Goleman (1998) and CASEL’s (2005) ﬁve clusters of SEL, each of which is linked to a collection of skills:

1. Self-awareness.

2. Social awareness.

3. Self-management.

4. Responsible decision-making.

5. Relationship management.

CASEL’s Elaboration of Social and Emotional Learning/Emotional Intelligence Skills (Kress & Elias, 2006):

1. Self-Awareness

s Recognizing and naming one’s emotions

s Understanding the reasons and circumstances for feeling as one does

s Recognizing and naming others’ emotions

s Recognizing strengths in, and mobilizing positive feelings about, self, school, family, and support

networks

s Knowing one’s needs and values

s Perceiving oneself accurately

s Believing in personal efﬁcacy

s Having a sense of spirituality

2. Social Awareness

s Appreciating diversity

s Showing respect to others

s Listening carefully and accurately

s Increasing empathy and sensitivity to others’ feelings

s Understanding others’ perspectives, points of view, and feelings

3. Self-Management and Organization

s Verbalizing and coping with anxiety, anger, and depression

s Controlling impulses, aggression, and self-destructive, antisocial behavior

s Managing personal and interpersonal stress

s Focusing on tasks at hand

s Setting short- and long-term goals

s Planning thoughtfully and thoroughly

s Modifying performance in light of feedback

s Mobilizing positive motivation

s Activating hope and optimism

s Working toward optimal performance states

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 277

emphasize, impart, and develop key attitudes and skills that are essential for reducing

emotional barriers to learning and successful interpersonal interactions, and (c) redu-

cing emotional barriers to effective learning and interaction is essential for low perform-

ing students to learn academic content and skills deeply and for all students to reach

their potential and apply what they learn in school to life inside and out of school.

CASEL’s research (CASEL, 2005; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger,

2011; Elias & Arnold, 2006; Elias et al., 1997; Greenberg et al., 2003) has continued to

show that schools of social, emotional, and academic excellence generally share ﬁve main

characteristics:

1. A school climate that articulates speciﬁc themes, character elements, or values,

such as respect, responsibility, fairness, and honesty, and conveys an overall

sense of purpose for attending school;

2. Explicit instruction and practice in skills for participatory competence;

3. Developmentally appropriate instruction in ways to promote health and

prevent problems;

4. Services and systems that enhance students’ coping skills and provide social

support for handling transitions, crises, and conﬂicts; and

5. Widespread, systematic opportunities for positive, contributory service.

These schools send messages about character, about how students should conduct

themselves as learners and members of common school communities, about the

respectful ways staff members should conduct themselves as educators, and about how

staff and parents should conduct themselves as supporters of learning. In other words,

SEL competencies are developed and reinforced not by programs but rather in the

context of supportive environments, which lead to asset-building, risk reduction,

enhanced health behaviors, and greater attachment to and engagement in school.

In CASEL’s deﬁnition of SEL, one can see that the theoretical understanding of how

children learn key social competencies has become more sophisticated than earlier views

4. Responsible Decision-Making

s Analyzing situations perceptively and identifying problems clearly

s Exercising social decision-making and problem-solving skills

s Responding constructively and in a problem-solving manner to interpersonal obstacles

s Engaging in self-evaluation and reﬂection

s Conducting oneself with personal, moral, and ethical responsibility

5. Relationship Management

s Managing emotions in relationships, harmonizing diverse feelings and viewpoints

s Showing sensitivity to social-emotional cues

s Expressing emotions effectively

s Communicating clearly

s Engaging others in social situations

s Building relationships

s Working cooperatively

s Exercising assertiveness, leadership, and persuasion

s Managing conﬂict, negotiation, refusal

s Providing, seeking help

278 s M.J. Elias et al.

of social skills acquisition. First, there is recognition that social performance involves

the coordination of affect, cognition, and behavior, and that these areas, as well as their

coordination, develop over time. Second, skill acquisition is the ongoing outcome of pro-

cesses that depends on nurturance, support, and appreciation in various environmental

contexts. Third, much is now realized about the many accumulating inﬂuences on stu-

dents, not all of which are consistent with the development of SEL skills. There is pres-

sure and modeling in the mass culture for impulsive behavior, quick decision-making,

short-term goal setting, extreme emotions, and violent problem solving. Students’ acqui-

sition and internalization of life skills occurs in a maelstrom of many competing forces

of socialization and development.

Research has gone beyond showing that SEL is fundamental to children’s health,

ethical development, citizenship, academic learning, and motivation to achieve (Zins,

Weissberg et al., 2004). It has also demonstrated the impact of systematic attempts to

improve children’s SEL. As they have evolved in the last decades of the twentieth century

and the early twenty-ﬁrst century, these interventions have focused on fostering stu-

dents’ social and emotional development.

Generally, they are premised on the understanding that students experience the

educational process as a social one; learning is facilitated (or hindered) by relation-

ships and interactions with teachers and/or peers. In general, a student who has more

developed social “intelligence” will have improved abilities to navigate the challenges

and processes of learning than one who does not. For example, a child who has poor

understanding of how to effectively manage human relationships may be unable to

communicate her needs to teachers or to others in the classroom environment; this

will likely impede her learning. SEL curricula are also based on the growing body of

evidence that students’ emotional experiences affect their learning and their demon-

stration of that learning (Patti & Tobin, 2003). This is most effectively illustrated by

contrasting the differences in information acquisition between a child who is enthusi-

astic about a topic and one who is not, or the differences in test results between a child

who can channel her anxiety about an exam into better information recall and a child

who is overwhelmed by his fear of assessment. Similarly, self-regulation skills such as

delay of gratiﬁcation can be a more robust predictor of academic performance than

IQ (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005).

Although SEL programs seek to develop social and emotional “intelligences,” these

aspects are not viewed as ﬁxed traits in that ﬁeld. Instead, SEL programs aim to help

students develop a set of skills that can help them better manage their own emotional

state and their interactions with other people in the educational environment in order

to maximize their learning experiences (Elias, Kress, & Hunter, 2006). Progress toward

these goals is made most quickly and enduringly when programs adopt a two-pronged

approach to SEL: intervention components aimed at individual students and at the

overall school climate. Yet, while individual students learn about, practice, and regularly

perform new thinking and behavior patterns in their everyday interactions at school, it

is equally important that SEL programs help teachers and administrators develop their

own social and emotional skills and incorporate SEL paradigms and techniques on a

broad level throughout the school (e.g., within the disciplinary and evaluative structure)

(Elias, 2001; Elias, O’Brien, & Weissberg, 2006; Elias et al., 1997). As these processes take

hold, the classroom and school become places where social and emotional matters are

openly discussed, valued, and practiced. When the educational culture changes this way,

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 279

it is much more likely that any new skills being attempted by students will be noticed

and reinforced.

Research suggests that SEL curricula designed in such a way have demonstrated

positive effects not only on school-related attitudes and behavior, but also on students’

academic achievement and test scores (Zins, Bloodworth, Weissberg, & Walberg, 2004).

Durlak et al.’s (2011) meta-analysis of 213 school-based SEL programs found that they

had a signiﬁcant impact on social and emotional skills, attitudes, and behavior, as well

as academic performance, with improvements reﬂecting an 11-percentile-point gain in

achievement. Across SEL programs, the overall mean effect size for improvements in

test scores and grades was 0.27 and 0.33, respectively, and these effects were sustained

through a follow-up period (mean = 150 weeks).

Perhaps most salient in the current education climate is that SEL-related after-school

programs yielded improvements in standardized test scores at a magnitude which is

more than twice as large as that found in a meta-analysis of academically-related after-

school programs (Durlak, Weissberg, & Pachan, 2010).

Such a history hints at but obscures the contributions of three streams of inﬂuence

on the deﬁnition of SEL, its implementation in school-based contexts, and its connec-

tion to moral and character education. Understanding this aspect of SEL’s background

is important for seeing the converging and, we believe, intertwining pathways that will

increasingly deﬁne these ﬁelds.

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY AND THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION

Social Learning Theory (SLT) (e.g., Bandura, 1973; Rotter, 1954) had enormous impact

on the methods and techniques of SEL programs. It was derived from work in clinical and

personality psychology and an appreciation of how cognitive factors led to the persist-

ence of behaviors that appeared on the surface to be undesirable and even counterpro-

ductive. Rotter, a seminal theorist in this ﬁeld, studied under Alfred Adler and was highly

inﬂuenced by his work with children. “Striving for superiority,” “style of life,” and “ﬁc-

tional ﬁnalism” are all essentially cognitive schema that presage much of the later work

in cognitive-behavioral theory. Bandura, in particular, observed how traditional, purely

behavioral learning theories were unable to explain how humans acquired novel, unre-

hearsed, and unreinforced behavior from watching other individuals’ actions (Bandura,

1973). SLT therefore focused not only on the impact of modeling and observation but

also the way in which individuals draw from their experiences to create expectancies

about interactions with others. These expectancies, in turn, exercise strong inﬂuence on

behavior.

Generalization, in SLT, is a function of creating an expectancy about the likely desirable

outcome of a behavior and its value. For this reason, the overall climate of the classroom

and school (i.e., the normative structure) is important to sustaining prosocial behavior.

Behaviors must reach a certain threshold of repetition, reinforcement, and salience if

they are to be internalized. As more inﬂuences in the environment provide messages

contrary to the program, the “dosage” of whatever an SEL (or moral or character educa-

tion program) wishes to convey in attitudes and skills will have to be higher before an

intervention’s message is received and remembered. Hence, SLT recognized the powerful

role presented by the ecological environment while also keeping in focus that it is the

280 s M.J. Elias et al.

individual’s interpretations of the environmental contingencies (i.e., expectancies) that

would ultimately be the most powerful inﬂuence on behavior.

Cognitive-behavioral Therapy

Many intervention approaches within SEL draw on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)

as the basis of their pedagogy. It was a short road from SLT’s focus on expectancies and

the role of modeling to the observation of Meichenbaum (1977) and others that these

expectancies were in consciousness and therefore likely to be “kept in mind” and inﬂu-

ence behavior through the process of self-talk. Behavior founded on faulty premises—

misunderstandings of the social environment, extreme thinking about how the world

works or one’s role in the world, or strong but misplaced emotions, such as depression

due to pessimism (all of which can be found in Adler’s theories)—is likely to be catego-

rized as maladaptive or pathological.

One area of CBT, social problem solving (Chang, D’Zurilla, & Sanna, 2004) captures

best the two main strands of CBT that have contributed to SEL. First, problem solving is

at the foundation of the vast majority of SEL approaches (CASEL, 2005). The common

features involve a process of identifying a problematic situation, addressing the feelings

related to it, putting a problem into words, deﬁning a goal, generating multiple options,

analyzing their potential consequences for short- and long-term implications for self

and others, making a choice, planning and rehearsing how to carry out that choice,

taking the necessary action, and reﬂecting on what happened and what can be learned

from it. Spivack and Shure (1974) were pioneers in recognizing that what they called

“interpersonal-cognitive problem solving” need not be taught only to individuals in

clinical settings. Rather, a preventive effect could be achieved by building these skills on

a universal basis, in the regular context of school and family life.

SEL pedagogy and CBT pedagogy have many points of convergence. Both emphasize

the use of real-life problems but also recognize the beneﬁts of thinking through how to

handle hypothetical situations before dealing with affectively-charged present situations.

Both emphasize the processes of brainstorming, goal-setting, observation/modeling and

practice/rehearsal of new behaviors, anticipation of potential obstacles and planning for

them, reﬂection on experiences, and the use of prompts and cues as an aide to gener-

alization. It is essential, from an SEL point of view, to recognize that generalization is

viewed as occurring through skill application and repeated mastery, in a large number of

contexts, and over a long period of time.

There are powerful implications of this from an intervention point of view. Effective

SEL requires congruence between any school-based program and the overall climate and

environment and norms of the school. Interventions conﬁned to one class period once

or twice per week for even a whole year are not likely to be as effective as approaches that

are coordinated across aspects of the school day, carried out and prompted continuously,

and continued across multiple years to have a cumulative effect.

The Role of Affect

SEL as a movement grew out of the growing interest in emotional intelligence popular-

ized by Daniel Goleman (1995), although, as noted, the term preceded his usage of it.

Nevertheless, Goleman’s work placed a strong focus on the role of emotion, or affect,

in everyday behavior—reasoning, decision-making, and the like. Others had preceded

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 281

him. Signiﬁcantly, Piaget, in his relatively under-noticed work, Intelligence and Affectivity

(1981), spoke clearly about the integration of affect and cognition and was pessimistic

about attempts to disentangle them. He saw emotions as having directive and energizing

functions, among others, and as vital for the implementation of intelligent action in the

world. Therefore Goleman’s emphasis was not new, but his renewal of it was accom-

panied by a resurgence of research in the area and a strong interest in emotion research

on the part of signiﬁcant funders.

The work of Carolyn Saarni (2007) has illuminated our understanding of the role of

affect in everyday life. Saarni focused on the development of emotional competence well

before “emotional intelligence” became deﬁned, and her work is an essential part of that

ﬁeld’s development. Her view of the eight skills of emotional competence takes a sophist-

icated developmental/transactional perspective (Saarni, 2007):

1. Awareness of emotional states, including the possibility of experiencing multiple

emotions at levels we may not be aware of consciously at all times.

2. Skill in discerning and understanding the emotions of others, based on situ-

ational and expressive cues that have a degree of cultural consensus as to their

emotional meaning.

3. Skill in using the vocabulary of emotion available in one’s subculture and the

link of emotional with social roles.

4. Capacity for empathic involvement in others’ emotional experiences.

5. Skill in understanding that inner emotional states need not correspond to outer

expression, both in ourselves and others, and how our emotional expression

may impact on others.

6. Skill in adaptive coping with aversive emotions and distressing circumstances

by using self-regulatory strategies and by employing effective problem-solving

strategies for dealing with problematic situations.

7. Awareness that relationships are largely deﬁned by how emotions are com-

municated within the relationships.

8. Capacity for emotional self-efﬁcacy, including viewing our emotional experi-

ence as justiﬁed and in accord with our moral beliefs.

As one can see, Saarni’s view of emotional competence contains bridges to social

problem solving and other cognitive skills, much as problem solving can contain

bridges to the affective domain. Her ﬁnal skill contains a link to the moral domain, rec-

ognizing the directive and contextual inﬂuence that moral beliefs provide.

Indeed, researchers such as Adolphs and Damasio (2001) now view our emotional capa-

cities as being among the earliest human capacities to develop and essential for sound

decision-making and relationship formation. In a recent study, Wyland and Forgas (2010)

demonstrated the inﬂuence of emotion on interpersonal judgments and processing styles

and other studies show how positive emotions are associated with increased trust and like-

lihood to believe that the facial expressions of others are genuine (Forgas & East, 2008a,

2008b). Feelings are not external to how we function and are best relied upon as both

internal and external guides to empathy, to understanding the perspective and feelings of

others, and to our decisions and their impact on self and others (Damasio, 1994). This point

of view has not been lost on those who are concerned about moral and character education

and the process by which students make moral decisions and take corresponding action.

282 s M.J. Elias et al.

Nucci (2001), for example, advocates for a better understanding of how emotion is

integrated into moral judgments. “Affect is part and parcel of adaptive intelligence” (p.

109); he argues that it is not useful to see it as somehow having any primacy. He notes

that, from an evolutionary psychology point of view, basic emotional schema and quick,

automatic responses have a place in interpersonal relationships, especially during infancy

and early childhood, but become less adaptive in the typical social environments one

encounters later in life. Gradually, the developmental challenge involves the integration

of affect into cognitive systems.

Building emotional competence has been a standard part of SEL approaches for many

years (and increasingly reﬂected in moral and character education practices), anticip-

ating the ﬁndings derived from neurobiology. However, for the introduction of efforts

into mainstream socialization practices of schools, considerations beyond those at the

individual level are clearly necessary (Dalton et al., 2007); these are provided by another

theoretical perspective, that of community psychology and social ecology.

A Community Psychology–Social Ecological Perspective

SEL theorists and researchers have come to agree that SEL interventions seek to change

not only direct, immediate reinforcement contingencies that maintain antisocial behavior,

but also aim to alter entire systems through interventions that target classrooms—teach-

ers and students alike—as well as schools, districts, and communities. This understand-

ing began in part with Lewin’s ﬁeld theory and his interest in examining the enormous

variety of psychological processes that operate within a particular situation at a given

time, and how an individual sits in the midst of an incredibly complex system of interac-

tions between forces at multiple levels (Lewin, 1951). Lewin was among the ﬁrst to assert

that behavior was at least as strongly inﬂuenced by context as by individual predilections.

This view was expanded by a community psychology/social-ecology perspective, which

sought to deﬁne the multiple, interactive, and dynamic levels of systems within which

individuals develop and adapt (Belsky, 1984; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Dalton et al., 2007).

Children’s social-emotional skills (and moral values) emerge out of an interaction

with parents and other caregivers and family members, educators, medical personnel,

and others whose responsibilities include navigating children through the socialization

process. However, these interactions are framed by the nature of the formal and informal

groups and organizations in which these interactions occur, the neighborhoods and

communities within which they reside, and the overall zeitgeist that is communicated

through the mass media. While social ecology theory is clear that small group inter-

actions are the most powerful development inﬂuence, the way in which digital media

invade lives of families means that elements of the zeitgeist have greater potency than

when events seemed more distant (Dalton et al., 2007). The implications of this are that

the inﬂuence of SEL programs must be placed in a larger ecological frame. Interventions

must be more encompassing and their impact will be related to their congruence with

messages being imparted by other sources of inﬂuence.

Consider several simple examples. Programs teaching skills in delay of gratiﬁcation

must contend with social inﬂuences urging individuals to “just do it” and to take quick,

and often violent, action. Pressures to be best or ﬁrst will balance the skill of waiting

one’s turn. In an example that intersects both SEL and moral education, the discipline

and skills needed for studying for a test are too often offset by an almost desperate need

to succeed, and hence to cheat. In summary, the community psychology/social ecology

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 283

perspective has led SEL researchers to embrace the understanding that lasting SEL skill

acquisition and concomitant signiﬁcant improvements in student behavior and aca-

demic achievement will be greatest to the extent that entire systems of psychological and

social forces are addressed by particular interventions in sustained ways (Elias & Clabby,

1992; Zins, Bloodworth et al., 2004).

Our understanding of the background of SEL shows its progression toward an eco-

logical, developmental, and systemic conceptualization of how skills are acquired and

maintained and the nexus within with interventions work. We now proceed to examine

ways to understand the current and potential pathways of convergence between SEL and

moral and character education.

AREAS OF CONVERGENCE BETWEEN MORAL AND CHARACTER

EDUCATION AND SEL

In recent years, formal organizations have developed to help codify and promulgate

theory, research, and practice in moral and character education and SEL. The Associ-

ation for Moral Education, founded in 1976, was the ﬁrst of these (www.amenetwork.

org/about.html, retrieved 9/11/12). The Character Education Partnership was founded

in 1993 for the purpose of advancing the ﬁeld in schools (www.character.org/about/

vision-and-mission/, retrieved 9/11/12). And as noted earlier CASEL was founded in

1993 to bring SEL into schools (www.CASEL.org). That said, the time has clearly arrived

when the advocacy aspect of these organizations must give way to convergence in the

interest of children and advancing their common agendas, as well as the common aspects

of their science and practice.

Huitt (2004) points out that fundamental to many approaches to moral and char-

acter education, and a criticism of some of Kohlberg’s (1984) work, is a reliance on

“right thinking” as leading to “right behavior.” This has led to a pedagogical emphasis on

values clariﬁcation/analysis/inculcation. These methods have not found strong empiri-

cal support. However, in more recent years, as the ﬁeld has coalesced under the banner

of character education in the context of schools, the connections between “right think-

ing” and proper behavior have been given greater attention. As noted earlier, this has

culminated conceptually in Lickona and Davidson’s (2005) distinction between moral

character and performance character. They have urged that an emphasis on moral values

is necessary but not sufﬁcient to inﬂuence behavior and yield enactments that would

allow one to be seen as having “good character.” The latter, more often than not, is a result

of one’s actions. Clearly, this requires some theoretical and practical position regarding

what behaviors are important for these enactments. As our exercise earlier about think-

ing of persons who embody different aspects of admirable character implied, such a per-

spective leads to greater convergence between SEL and moral/character education. SEL,

as a set of basic interpersonal competencies, can be used for good or ill; but to be used for

good, they must be mastered well—responsibility, respect, honesty, and other desirable

aspects of character all require sound SEL competencies; hence, the latter are participa-

tory competencies in the fullest sense of that concept.

In a recent position paper set forth by the Character Education Partnership, this

expanded view of character education is further described, highlighting the interde-

pendent importance of both performance character and moral character (www.char-

acter.org/uploads/PDFs/White_Papers/Performance_Values.pdf, retrieved 9/11/12). The

284 s M.J. Elias et al.

paper expands the vision of character education, describing a broader goal of helping

children both be their best, and do their best. To accomplish this, they urge, schools must

teach children to care about both the purpose and the quality of their work, cultivating

“craftsmen” whose contributions to the world will be both meaningful and effective.

This position paper describes speciﬁc practices that have been used by teachers and

schools to develop performance character, many of which also foster moral character

development. For example, the importance of co-curricular activities is highlighted as

a central component in the development of both moral and performance character. By

creating diverse opportunities for youth to recognize that they are capable of excellence,

co-curricular activities help foster a “culture of excellence,” that serves to transform the

self-image of youth and enhance future performance. Similarly, by fostering “growth

mindsets” that emphasize the importance of effort, and encouraging feedback and revi-

sions until mastery is achieved, youth learn to value the growth and achievement as a

process, rather than just an end goal. This mindset has clear implications for moral char-

acter development as well, particularly as mounting pressure to achieve has increased the

rates of cheating among today’s youth. Also noted as important for the development of

performance character is creating safe and supportive learning environments that foster

school connectedness, providing models of excellence, using rubrics to help students

take responsibility of their work, preparing students to make public presentations of

their work, and assigning work that matters. In these ways, schools can help foster the

performance character that will enable youth to successfully act upon their moral prin-

ciples.

We wish to conclude by positing areas that we believe lie at the intersection of moral

and character education and SEL. We do this by sharing observations based on a number

of schools recognized as exemplary in SEL, character education, and related domains. In

doing so, we attempt to align ourselves with others in the ﬁeld whose past observations

have been conﬁrmed subsequently by replicated research.

How to Create Stronger Moral Sensibilities and Morally-Guided Action in Youth

At the end of Democracy and Education, Dewey (1916) provides a trenchant and presci-

ent view of moral education in saying that

The most important problem of moral education in the school concerns the rela-

tionship of knowledge and conduct . . . the school becomes itself a form of social life,

a miniature community and one in close interaction with other modes of associated

experience beyond school walls. All education which develops power to share effect-

ively in social life is moral.

(www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/education/

DemocracyandEducation/chap26.html, retrieved 10/26/13)

Dewey’s observations implicitly speak to the convergence and synergy of SEL and moral

and character education, Here, we wish to move toward some modest, pragmatic sug-

gestions that may be thought of as ﬁrst steps at fostering integrative approaches.

A current individual with Dewey-an insights, James Comer (2003), has made the point

that children cannot be taught character, but rather “catch” it from the adults around

them and the nature of the interactions they directly and indirectly experience. That

said, it is not obvious exactly what children need to be exposed to, or for how long and in

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 285

what ways, if they are to become “infected” with sound character. Perhaps some readers

can recall parents bringing their children to spend time with friends who had measles or

chicken pox in the hope that they would get these diseases then, rather than just prior to

a family vacation time. Sometimes it worked, but more often, it did not. How, then, can

we maximize the likelihood that parents and teachers can expose children to the con-

ditions that are more likely to lead to a strong moral compass and the fortitude to follow

the directions being pointed to? SEL has a great deal to say about how well an individual

will be able to pick up the cues and experiences being provided by the environmental

context. However, even if the skills are functioning well, the question remains about

what kinds of experiences are necessary, or desirable, to create a strong moral sense and

a commitment to act on that sense.

As noted earlier, difﬁcult questions must be faced, such as the perceived source of

moral authority. Different religions provide different moral codes, although with a strong

degree of overlap. What seems true in studies of modern religious identity development

is that moral education is best thought of as a comprehensive system of socialization, as

opposed to creating religious identity or adherence to a set of values by simply exposing

students to a set of individual moral principles. Without a nomological net to connect

the moral principles in some way, it is very likely that an individual will deal with moral-

ity in a highly pragmatic and contextual manner rather than having an enduring set

of guiding principles as the basis for his or her decisions and actions. We believe it is

for this reason that Dewey forged such a strong link between democracy (as an organ-

izing principle for morality) and education (as one potent source of moral experiences)

and why character education approaches have implicitly or explicitly used frameworks

drawn from religious observance as an organizing principle for sets or pillars of values/

morals (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

In their Values in Action (VIA) Classiﬁcation of Strengths, Peterson and Seligman

attempt an organization of universal human strengths and values. To accomplish this,

they conducted a thorough study of the world’s dominant religions and traditions (Dahl-

sgaard, Peterson, & Seligman, 2005). Results from their literature review revealed a sur-

prising degree of agreement across cultures, indicating “a historical and cross-cultural

convergence of six core virtues” including: courage, justice, humanity, temperance,

wisdom, and transcendence. The Classiﬁcation of Strengths divides these six virtues into

24 human characteristics, which were determined to be strengths of character, reﬂected

in thoughts, feelings, and behavior. These character strengths have been associated with

a range of positive outcomes in adolescence including increased mental health and well

being (Gillham et al., 2011) and a reduction of problems such as substance use, alcohol

abuse, smoking, and violence (Park, 2004).

Based on the work of Peterson and Seligman, the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program)

schools have integrated a structured and measurable approach to character development

within their network of charter schools (www.kipp.org). In partnership with University

of Pennsylvania researcher, Angela Duckworth, KIPP schools focus on the integration

of seven character strengths: zest, grit, self-control, optimism, gratitude, social intelli-

gence, and curiosity. The KIPP model employs seven steps for the integration of these

character strengths into schools: believe and model them, name them (provide labels

for values that foster discussion and awareness of them), “ﬁnd it” or provide real-world

and ﬁctional examples of character strengths, “feel it” or help youth feel the positive

effects by developing their own strengths, integrate character education into curricula,

286 s M.J. Elias et al.

encourage strength by providing growth mindset praise, and track improvements in

character growth by recording and discussing progress towards character goals (www.

kipp.org/our-approach/character-and-academics, retrieved 10/26/13). This last step is

accomplished through the development of a “character report card,” which grants stu-

dents a CPA (character-point average) that tracks character growth in a systematic and

tangible way, conveying to students that success in this domain is of equal importance as

academic success (Tough, 2012).

In contemporary society, the print and digital media bring many moral situations

to individuals’ attention in the comfort of their homes. Often, these take the form of

tragedies of hunger and disease, horrors of violence, ravages of natural disasters. In the

vast majority of instances, we are not moved to act, though we have a moral objection

to what we are seeing and hearing. Brendtro, Brokenleg, and Van Bockern (2002) view

children as having sympathy, empathy, and compassion for others. Sympathy refers to

the capacity to understand what is happening to others and to take the perspective of

being in their shoes. Empathy adds to this an emotional attunement so that one not only

understands but also shares the emotions of the others in their situation. Compassion

brings in a behavioral component, such that one understands, feels, and is moved to act

in a situation. While the distinction between these three emotions is not precise, they

serve to underscore that moral action requires something “extra” on the part of an indi-

vidual and does not follow automatically from being empathic. Moving children toward

this “extra” requires the adults in their lives to provide children with a balance of Appre-

ciation, Belonging, Opportunities and Support for Competencies, and Contributions in

their lives, and by adults consistently reinforcing SEL behavior and positive values and

actions across both the home and school contexts (Albright & Weissberg, 2010; Elias,

Tobias, & Friedlander, 2002; Kessler, 2000).

A Culminating Discussion: SEL and Moral and Character Education Are

Complementary Perspectives

From at least the time of the Bible and Aristotle, people have wondered about humankind’s

potential to learn more effective ways of managing emotional experiences and social rela-

tionships; an integration of SEL and moral and character education offers a possible route

to achieve this goal. Proponents of SEL have acknowledged that skills require direction

and that maladaptive direction, such as might come from extremist or criminal ideologies,

can be pursued effectively through SEL competencies. Moral and character educators are

recognizing that it takes more than volition and intention to act with sound character. SEL

is a parallel movement to moral education in that it is more about the process of learning

than the content of learning. That is, the focus is on educating for morality and educating

for social-emotional competence, as opposed to educating about morality and about social-

emotional competence. These competencies are not neutral, however; they are aligned with

fundamental, common values and attributes of good character and sound moral develop-

ment. Proponents of both views now see the need to go beyond a focus on programs and

content and look at the way in which individuals develop in the context of their ecological

environment over time and how that environment can be modiﬁed to impart skills and

values that can lead children toward productive futures.

The education system has the responsibility of preparing children for citizenship

in a democracy and for leading a morally-guided life. Schools contribute to this most

effectively when the culture and climate of the school require students to “live” their

SEL, Moral Education, and Character Education s 287

social-emotional competencies in contexts of moral character with high aspirations.

When students are in schools that communicate ambiguous or negative moral messages,

students’ views of the consequences of their actions become skewed and they use their

skills in ways that might be quite harmful to them in the long term.

SEL and moral and character education converge by providing a deep and visceral

understanding of moral character by organizing schools as moral, caring communities

of character with clear values reﬂective of strongest cultural convergence, and ensuring

that all children are given opportunities and competences to enact their moral character

in deep and meaningful ways by becoming active participants in the everyday life of

the school. The school becomes a primary context for students’ social-emotional and

character development. Thus imprinted, children will be strengthened in their desire to

seek out such communities as places to live and work and worship, and bring these same

inﬂuences into how they make their homes into places to raise children of character

and competence. This is the promise of ensuring that SEL, moral, and character educa-

tion are connected, contained in this abbreviated logic model: caring and civil schools,

engaged students, prepared and participatory citizens of character.

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290

SMART & GOOD SCHOOLS

A New Paradigm for High School Character Education

Matthew Davidson, Thomas Lickona, and Vladimir Khmelkov

Writing in the Journal of Research in Character Education, character education

researcher and historian James Leming (2006) points out a paradox: On the one

hand, a “motivating rationale” for contemporary character education has been ado-

lescent behavior such as “suicide rates, teen violence, declining academic perform-

ance, increasing drug usage, and precocious sexual activity”; on the other hand, “to

date general character education efforts have been primarily focused on elementary

and middle school levels” (p. 83). Although character-related challenges are perceived

to be greatest at the high school level, character education interventions have prim-

arily targeted the elementary and middle developmental levels. Leming’s assessment

that character education efforts “have made few inroads in high schools” (2006, p. 84)

is corroborated by Berkowitz and Bier’s (2006) What Works in Character Education.

In this monograph, 33 character education programs or strategies are identiﬁed that

have demonstrated empirical effectiveness; the great majority of these approaches,

they note, were developed for the elementary or middle school levels (Berkowitz &

Bier, 2006).

If high schools do in fact have less interest in character education than elementary

and middle schools, that phenomenon cannot be explained by lack of interest in school

improvement. On the contrary, for more than a decade, strengthening high schools has

been at the forefront of the national school reform debate. At least a dozen educational

organizations are dedicated to promoting one or another high school reform model (cf.

National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, 2004). Philanthropic groups

such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have poured extensive resources into pro-

moting small learning communities, school connectedness, and other efforts to increase

high school academic achievement, especially among historically underserved students

(Vander Ark, 2005).

If problems such as underachievement, drop-outs, academic dishonesty, violence,

drugs, and sexual activity are most pronounced in the high school years, why, then,

Smart & Good Schools s 291

have high schools not embraced character education as a central school improvement

strategy? Leming offers as one reason the fact that

high school teachers tend to identify themselves as subject matter specialists and

give less emphasis to character development than in elementary and middle schools.

High school teachers, when asked to deﬁne their professional focus, tend to say, “I

teach History” or some other subject area.

(Leming, 2006, pp. 83–84)

This tendency of high school educators to deﬁne their role as subject matter specialists

is reinforced by the high-stakes testing environment (cf. Berliner & Nichols, 2007). The

upshot of all this: If academic achievement is the focus of high schools, they are likely

to see character education as relevant only to the extent that it supports the academic

mission, narrowly deﬁned as teaching and learning the formal curriculum.

In the past, character educators have argued that by helping to create a safe, caring,

and orderly school environment, character education creates the conditions conducive

to teaching and learning and in that indirect way fosters academic achievement (e.g.,

Beland, 2003; Lickona, 2004; Schwartz, Beatty, & Dachnowicz, 2006). In fact, research

by the Developmental Studies Center at the elementary level (Schaps, Watson, & Lewis,

1996) indicates that students’ sense of the school as a caring community is a mediating

variable in a diverse range of important school outcomes, including reading compre-

hension and other academic indicators. However, once teachers have established a

safe, caring, and orderly classroom, is there any other, more direct role for character

development in fostering academic achievement? Do character strengths, for example,

have an ongoing role in helping a student succeed at math, science, and writing, and if

so, how? In our experience, high school teachers typically do not see character as con-

tributing directly to academic learning because they tend to equate character educa-

tion with “discussing ethics” or with “touchy-feely” social and emotional activities,

which they view as peripheral to the demands of the academic curriculum. As one

chemistry teacher told us, “I teach chemistry; I don’t teach character. Occasionally,

I might touch on an ethical issue, but I don’t have a lot of time for that” (Lickona &

Davidson, 2005, p. 27).

OUR TWO-YEAR STUDY OF HIGH SCHOOLS

Our interest in how high school educators think about character education, what they

currently do and don’t do (intentionally or unintentionally) to develop character, and

what can be done to promote the wider implementation of character development

practices in the adolescent years led us to undertake a two-year study of high school

character education, Smart & Good High Schools (Lickona & Davidson, 2005). We

began with the belief that the development of character is a worthy pursuit in its

own right, not simply for the other desired outcomes it can bring to a school (e.g.,

academic achievement, school retention, etc.). We believe in the importance of char-

acter in all phases of life. From this perspective, the most important goal of character

education is to prepare all young people to lead a ﬂourishing life. The work of the

Search Institute (Scales, Benson, Leffert, Scales, & Blyth, 1998), and more recently the

positive psychology movement (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) has emphasized the value

292 s M. Davidson et al.

of “asset-building,” identifying and developing those human strengths that enable us

to become all we are capable of being. It was this broad purpose of character edu-

cation—to help all young people maximize their potential for meaningful, fulﬁlling

lives—that most deeply informed our study.

However, we also recognize a second legitimate purpose of character education: to

help reduce the negative behaviors by which young people hurt themselves and society.

Booker T. Washington asserted that “character is power”; we see character and culture

as a largely untapped power source that can help to address a range of acute challenges

facing schools and society. Indeed, character educators (e.g., Lickona, 1991, 2004; Lickona

& Davidson, 2005) have long argued that the troubling behaviors we observe in young

people—and in many of the adults who set the example for youth—have a common

core: namely, the absence of good character. Developing good character offers the hope

of striking at the root of anti-social or self-destructive behaviors and thereby helping to

correct and prevent them. This line of argument has sometimes been referred to as the

“instrumental” case for character education because it is being offered as a means of

ameliorating social ills. But we view this as a legitimate and eminently practical purpose

of character education at all developmental levels and especially in high schools, when

problematic behaviors such as a lack of responsibility toward schoolwork, academic dis-

honesty, bullying, substance abuse, and sexual activity typically reach higher levels, as

Leming (2006) has pointed out.

Research methodology. In carrying out our two-year study of “promising practices”

in high school character education, we conducted a “grounded theory” research meth-

odology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1994): (1) assembling a database

of more than 1,400 books, research studies, reports, and other materials on adolescent

development, character education, and high school reform; (2) full-day site visits to each

of 24 diverse, award-winning high schools—18 public and six private—in every geo-

graphical region of the country; (3) input and feedback from a National Experts Panel

(32 authorities on different aspects of adolescent development, character education, and

high school reform) and a National Student Leaders Panel (one boy and one girl nomi-

nated by each school studied); and (4) supplemental interviews with other high school

educators, parents, coaches, community members, and leaders of youth development

programs. We established three criteria by which a practice could be considered “promis-

ing”: (1) research validation (for example, experimental research has found the practice

to be effective, or to be related to a variable—such as sense of community—that has been

shown to mediate positive character outcomes); (2) relevance to important adolescent

outcomes (e.g., development as an ethical thinker) and/or important school outcomes

(e.g., reduced discipline problems); and (3) the testimony of credible sources (e.g., an

award for excellence from a credible educational organization such as the US Depart-

ment of Education or the Character Education Partnership). Most of the practices we

identiﬁed as promising met the ﬁrst of these criteria (research validation) in that they

were directly or indirectly linked to a research base.

In the remainder of this chapter, we lay out some of the core constructs, relevant

research, and illustrative practices that deﬁne our Smart & Good Schools framework.

Our beginning premise is that throughout history, education rightly conceived has had

two great goals—to help students become smart (in the multidimensional sense of

intelligence) and to help them become good (in the multidimensional sense of moral

maturity)—and that they need character for both.

Smart & Good Schools s 293

A NEW DEFINITION OF CHARACTER

The ﬁrst major construct of our Smart & Good Schools model is its conception of human

character as having two major parts: performance character and moral character. Our

research has led us to propose a paradigm shift in the way we think about character and

character education. We came to realize that character isn’t just about “doing the right

thing” in an ethical sense; it is also about doing our best work. If that is true, then char-

acter education isn’t just about helping kids get along; it is also about teaching them to

work hard, develop their talents, and aspire to excellence in every area of endeavor.

However, this broader conception of character education—as fostering best work as

well as best ethical behavior—tends not to be reﬂected in media accounts of character

education. For example, a newspaper article appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

about character education under the headline, “Don’t lie, don’t cheat, be on time”

(Draper, 2006). The article quoted a state senator as saying, “I would call this ‘golden

rule education’ ” (Draper, 2006). The headline and the article conveyed the message that

character is about doing the right thing ethically and not doing the wrong thing ethically.

However, we would ask: Is it enough if students simply don’t lie, cheat, and show up late?

Is that enough to render character relevant to every high school in America? Is this vision

of character a vision of human ﬂourishing? What about the role of character in helping

students to do their best work—to give their best effort in the classroom, on the athletic

ﬁeld, in the workplace, and in every area of their lives?

An expanded conception of character education as fostering best work as well as best

ethical conduct requires an expanded conception of character. Based on our high school

research, we propose a deﬁnition of character as having two essential and interconnected

parts: performance character and moral character (depicted in Figure 17.1 below).

We describe performance character as a “mastery orientation.” It consists of those

qualities—including but not limited to diligence, perseverance, a strong work ethic, a

positive attitude, ingenuity, and self-discipline—needed to realize one’s potential for

excellence in any performance environment, such as academics, extracurricular activities,

Figure 17.1 Moral and Performance Character Heuristic.

294 s M. Davidson et al.

the workplace, and throughout life. Moral character is a “relational orientation.” It con-

sists of those qualities— including but not limited to integrity, justice, caring, respect,

and cooperation—needed for successful interpersonal relationships and ethical conduct.

Moral character enables us to treat others—and ourselves—with respect and care and

to act with integrity in our ethical lives. Moral character also has the important job of

moderating our performance goals to honor the interests of others, to ensure that we

do not violate moral values such as fairness, honesty, and caring in the pursuit of high

performance.

RESEARCH RELEVANT TO PERFORMANCE CHARACTER AND MORAL

CHARACTER

Support for the importance of performance character and moral character comes from

four sources: (1) research on lives of character; (2) research on talent development; (3)

research on academic performance; and (4) the voices of teachers and students.

Research on lives of character. If we examine lives of character, we invariably ﬁnd both

strong performance character and strong moral character at work. In their book, Some Do

Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment, Colby and Damon (1992) proﬁle 23 men

and women of exemplary character, including religious leaders of different faiths, busi-

ness leaders, physicians, teachers, heads of nonproﬁt organizations, and leaders of social

movements. Their contributions spanned civil rights, the ﬁght against poverty, medical

care, education, philanthropy, the environment, peace, and religious freedom. Viewing

these portraits of character through the lens of the performance character and moral

character construct, one sees, again and again, the interplay of these two sides of charac-

ter: high ethical goals combined with diligence and determination in the pursuit of those

goals.

To take just one example: Colby and Damon describe the work of Cabel Brand, who as

a businessman over three decades developed a small family company into a multimillion

dollar corporation. Brand launched a social action program called Total Action Against

Poverty (TAP). TAP initiated one of the nation’s ﬁrst Head Start programs; developed pro-

grams for high school drop-outs, the elderly, ex-offenders, drug addicts, and the home-

less; and created a food bank, a program to bring running water to rural people, economic

development programs for impoverished urban areas, and community cultural centers.

Brand’s combination of drive, expertise, organizational skills, and concern for the welfare

of others typiﬁes the exemplars in this study. Colby and Damon’s book could have been

titled, Some Do Care—And Those Who Care Most Effectively Are Very Good At What They

Do. None of the noble accomplishments of these exemplars would have been possible

without the synergistic contributions of performance character and moral character.

Research on talent development. Studies of talent development show that performance

character qualities such as self-discipline and good work habits are essential for develop-

ing innate ability. In their book Talented Teenagers, a ﬁve-year longitudinal study of 200

talented adolescents, Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, and Whalen (1993) begin by noting

that underachievement on the part of talented youth is quite common in ﬁelds as varied

as athletics, art, science, mathematics, and music. Why do some talented teens develop

their potential while other equally gifted peers do not? This study found that adolescents

who were more successful in developing their talents were characterized by a stronger

“achievement and endurance orientation” and habits conducive to talent development—

Smart & Good Schools s 295

such as focusing on goals whether doing talent-related work or general schoolwork, being

able to spend time alone, and, when they did spend time with friends, collaborating on

hobbies and studying instead of simply “hanging out.” Strong performance character was

the distinguishing mark of teens who made the most of their talent potential.

Similarly, Ericsson (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006) investigated the

origins of expert performance, utilizing performance statistics, biographical details, and

their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Based on their research, they argue

that talent is generally overrated as a predictor of excellence, whereas deliberative practice

(deﬁned as setting speciﬁc goals, obtaining immediate feedback, and concentrating as

much on technique as on outcome) is a much more powerful predictor. They assert that

across a diverse sampling of ﬁelds, “stars”—expert performers—are made, not born. In

other words, it is performance character, not simply talent that leads to expert perform-

ance. Narvaez and Lapsley (2005) reach parallel conclusions in their work on expertise.

Research on academic performance. Given their focus on academic achievement,

high schools will be especially interested in evidence that improvement in students’

performance character leads to improved academic performance. For example, Duck-

worth and Seligman (2006) sought to understand why throughout elementary, middle,

and high school, girls earn higher grades than boys in all major subjects, in spite of the

fact that boys outperform girls on measures of achievement (e.g., SAT, ACT, AP) and

IQ. Previously this performance difference was explained by gender differences favoring

boys in these tests. However, using student measures of delayed gratiﬁcation and self-

report, as well as teacher and parent ratings, Duckworth and Seligman’s research (2006)

identiﬁes the character strength of self-discipline as giving girls the performance edge

over boys.

There are multiple theoretical grounds for predicting this positive relation between

performance character (e.g., self-discipline) and higher academic performance. Educa-

tional, sociological, and social psychological theories of the learning process have long

recognized student effort as central to student learning (e.g., Sørensen & Hallinan,

1977; Yair, 2000). In their book Classroom Instruction That Works, Marzano, Picker-

ing, and Pollock (2001) report that students who believe that achievement is some-

thing they earn through effort, and not primarily the result of innate abilities, do best

in school. Tough (2012) presents research on the power of character strengths such

as grit and curiosity as a powerful predictor of student success. Students’ academic

effort and achievement are, in turn, enhanced by a school climate focused on excel-

lence (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993; Shouse, 1996). High school students who become

more oriented toward excellence are more likely to choose advanced courses, which

are likely to result in skills and credentials that students need to achieve success in

college and in the labor market (Davenport et al., 1998; Kerckhoff, 1993). The kinds of

courses students take do in fact predict academic achievement and college matricula-

tion (Lukas, 1999; Stevenson, Schiller, & Schneider, 1994).

Moreover, when students’ development of performance character leads to their

improved effort and quality of work, the classroom conditions for learning and teach-

ing also improve. With more students focused on work and fewer distractions, teachers

are able to devote more time to teaching content and working with individual students.

A reciprocal expectations-obligations relationship tends to emerge between students and

educators, with both sides feeling a stronger commitment to higher quality of teaching

and learning (Coleman, 1988, 1990; Khmelkov & Power, 2000; Portes, 1998).

296 s M. Davidson et al.

To summarize our conceptualization of performance character and moral character,

we offer the following propositions:

A person of character embodies both performance character and moral charac-

ter. Washington State University historian Richard Hooker (1996) notes that the Greek

notion of arête is often translated as “virtue” but is actually better translated as “being

the best you can be” or “reaching your highest human potential.” To become a person of

character is to become the best person we can be—to develop our full human potential.

Clearly, being the best person we can be includes doing our best work (performance

character) as well as doing the right thing in our relationships (moral character).

Performance character and moral character both carry obligation. Performance

character, like moral character, has an ethical dimension; it is a moral failure, for example,

when we do shoddy work. Green (1999) refers to this moral notion of performance as

“conscience of craft.” He states: “To possess a conscience of craft is to have acquired the

capacity for self-congratulation or deep self-satisfaction at something well done, shame

at slovenly work, and even embarrassment at carelessness” (1999, p. 62). All of us have

a responsibility to develop our talents, use them to enhance the lives of others, and give

our best effort as we perform the large and small tasks of life (performance character).

We have this obligation for two reasons: (1) respect for ourselves requires us not to waste

our talents but to use them to develop as persons and to perform to the best of our ability

in whatever we undertake; and (2) caring about others requires us to do our work well,

since the quality of our work, especially in the world beyond school, affects the quality of

other people’s lives. When we do our work well—whether as a parent, teacher, mechanic,

or doctor—other people typically beneﬁt; when we do it poorly, other people suffer. In a

similar way, we have a responsibility to be our best ethical self (moral character)—both

out of self-respect and because our ethical conduct affects the lives of those around us. If

we treat others with respect and caring, we contribute to their welfare and happiness; if

we do the opposite, we demean them and subtract from the quality of their lives.

In a person of character, performance character and moral character support each

other in an integrated way. In a person of character, the two sides of character are inter-

dependent; each needs the other. Consider what can happen if we have performance

character without moral character. We might choose selﬁsh goals (such as making a lot

of money that we spend only on ourselves) or even evil goals (such as blowing up inno-

cent people). Or we might choose a good goal (such as doing well in school or ﬁghting

terrorism) but corrupt our pursuit of that goal by using unethical means to achieve it

(such as plagiarizing papers or employing inhumane methods to interrogate suspected

terrorists). Moral character is what motivates us to choose moral goals and then pursue

them in a fully ethical way. Or, consider what happens if we have moral character without

performance character. We might have good intentions but poor ability to execute. We

might want to help others—through a community service project, for example—but

lack the conﬁdence, organization, ingenuity, and perseverance to carry that out effect-

ively. In this vision of the interdependence of performance character and moral charac-

ter, excellence and ethics harmonize to make possible an act—or a life—of character.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF CHARACTER IN ACADEMICS?

Having argued the case for a concept of character that gives a central role to both per-

formance character and moral character, we return to the question that has until now

Smart & Good Schools s 297

been difﬁcult for character educators to answer: “What is the connection between charac-

ter and academics?” We believe this question is easier to answer if we apply our expanded

deﬁnition of character as comprised of performance character and moral character.

From this theoretical perspective, one can identify four important roles for character in

academic life (and work in general):

1. Students need performance character (work ethic, self-discipline, perseverance,

initiative, teamwork, etc.) in order to do their best academic work.

2. Students develop their performance character (the ability to work hard, over-

come obstacles, ﬁnd joy in a job well done, etc.) from their schoolwork.

3. Students need moral character (respect, fairness, kindness, honesty, etc.) in

order to create the classroom relationships that make for a positive learning

environment.

4. Students develop moral character from their schoolwork (e.g., by helping their

peers to do their best work through a “culture of critique” that offers construc-

tive feedback, by studying ethical issues in the curriculum, and by using their

curricular learning in service projects that help solve real-world problems).

In short, both performance character and moral character are needed for and developed

from every area of academic work. Character is no longer the “other side of the report

card” (i.e., “the ethical” or “social-emotional side”); it is “the whole report card” in that

character is a foundation for, and a critical outcome of, all academic and ethical endeav-

ors. The ethical and social-emotional outcomes of character education are not replaced

or de-emphasized; instead in this new paradigm, character is wrapped around every

element of the formal and informal curriculum. Schools no longer need to talk about

“balancing academics and character” as if there were a tension between the two. In the

Smart & Good School paradigm, teaching academics and developing character are

opposite sides of the same coin. Done effectively, they occur simultaneously in mutually

supportive ways.

EIGHT STRENGTHS OF CHARACTER (DEVELOPMENTAL OUTCOMES)

Although performance character and moral character increase character education’s

relevance to the school’s academic mission, we believe these two major parts of char-

acter will be more practically useful to educators if they are deﬁned in terms of speciﬁc

strengths of character that can serve as target developmental outcomes. Our Smart &

Good Schools framework proposes eight such strengths of character as the crucial out-

comes of schooling: (1) lifelong learner and critical thinker, (2) diligent and capable

performer, (3) socially and emotionally skilled person, (4) ethical thinker, (5) respectful

and responsible moral agent, (6) self-disciplined person who pursues a healthy lifestyle,

(7) contributing community member and democratic citizen, and (8) spiritual person

engaged in crafting a life of noble purpose (deﬁned inclusively to encompass non-reli-

gious as well as religious world views and to focus on universally important existential

questions such as “What is the meaning of life?” and “What is authentic happiness?”).

We see these Eight Strengths of Character not as narrow “traits” but rather as a broad

heuristic of psychological assets needed for a ﬂourishing life. (Table 17.1 describes each

of these eight strengths in terms of what we see as their sub-components.)

298 s M. Davidson et al.

Table 17.1 Eight Strengths of Character: Assets Needed for a Flourishing Life

1. Lifelong learner and critical thinker

s Strives to acquire the knowledge that characterizes an educated person

s Approaches learning as a lifelong process

s Demonstrates skills of critical analysis

s Takes seriously the perspectives of others

s Seeks expert opinion and credible evidence

s Makes connections and integrates knowledge

s Generates alternative solutions

s Demonstrates willingness to admit error and modify thinking

2. Diligent and capable performer

s Strives for excellence; gives best effort

s Demonstrates initiative and self-discipline

s Knows standards of quality and creates high-quality products; takes pride in work

s Sets personal goals and assesses progress

s Perseveres in the face of difﬁculty

3. Socially and emotionally skilled person

s Possesses a healthy self-conﬁdence and a positive attitude

s Demonstrates basic courtesy in social situations

s Develops positive interpersonal relationships that include sensitivity to the feelings of others and the

capacity for “confrontation”

s Communicates effectively

s Works well with others

s Resolves conﬂicts fairly

s Demonstrates emotional intelligence, including self-knowledge and the ability to manage emotions

4. Ethical thinker

s Possesses moral discernment, including good judgment, moral reasoning, and ethical wisdom

s Has a well-formed conscience, including a sense of obligation to do the right thing

s Has a strong moral identity that is deﬁned by one’s moral commitments

s Possesses the moral competence, or “know how,” needed to translate discernment, conscience, and

identity into effective moral behavior.

5. Respectful and responsible moral agent committed to consistent moral action

s Respects the rights and dignity of all persons

s Understands that respect includes the right of conscience to disagree respectfully with others’ beliefs

or behaviors

s Possesses a strong sense of personal efﬁcacy and responsibility to do what’s right

s Takes responsibility for mistakes

s Accepts responsibility for setting a good example and being a positive inﬂuence

s Develops and exercises capacity for moral leadership

6. Self-disciplined person who pursues a healthy lifestyle

s Demonstrates self-control across a wide range of situations

s Pursues physical, emotional, and mental health

s Makes responsible personal choices that contribute to continuous self-development, a healthy

lifestyle, and a positive future.

7. Contributing community member and democratic citizen

s Contributes to family, classroom, school, and community

s Demonstrates civic virtues and skills needed for participation in democratic processes

s Appreciates the nation’s democratic heritage and democratic values

s Demonstrates awareness of interdependence and a sense of responsibility to humanity

Smart & Good Schools s 299

Our Eight Strengths of Character heuristic is built from cross-cultural research on

character, notably Peterson’s and Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues (2004); clas-

sical conceptions of a meaningful life (e.g., Frankel, 1959); positive psychology (Selig-

man, 2002); moral psychology (e.g., Blasi, 2004; Kohlberg, 1976; Lapsley, 1996); research

on social-emotional learning (e.g., CASEL, 2003; Elias et al., 1997; Goleman, 1995);

educational research (e.g., Marzano et al., 2001; Pallas, 2000); work on the development

of purpose (e.g., Damon, Memon, & Bronk, 2003) and the role of spirituality in educa-

tion (e.g., Kessler, 2000; Palmer, 1999); research on service learning (e.g., Billig, 2000);

theory and research on intellectual character (e.g., Ritchhart, 2002; Sternberg, 1997); the

input of our Experts Panel and Student Leaders Panel; and our own grounded theory

research.

Just as we see performance character and moral character as mutually supportive,

we also see the Eight Strengths of Character as interdependent, each needed for the

optimal functioning of the others. Being a diligent and capable performer, for example,

affects how hard we work at developing all the other strengths of character. Consider, for

example, the hard, persevering work it takes to become a socially and emotionally skilled

person who listens well to others and can solve conﬂicts effectively. Being an ethical

thinker—bringing discerning moral judgment to bear on every situation—guides how

we live out all the other strengths. Being a self-disciplined person who pursues a healthy

lifestyle will clearly affect our ability to actualize all the other strengths of character. As

we grow as spiritual persons, deepening our sense of purpose in life, that brings new

energy and resolve to the development of the other strengths. And so on.

The Eight Strengths of Character heuristic represents what we think is a needed expan-

sion of character education theory, especially if it wishes to address the real-world chal-

lenges faced by high schools. Most previous approaches have deﬁned desired character

outcomes more narrowly. Moral education has focused on ethical thinking as the central

developmental outcome at the high school level. The social and emotional learning ﬁeld

has viewed social and emotional skills as the major desired outcome. Civic education

and service learning have seen democratic citizenship as the central goal, and so on. In

reality, however, the varied academic and behavioral challenges faced by high schools

and the short- and long-term outcomes desired by society from high schools, require a

more comprehensive character theory with a broader set of character outcomes. Without

an adequate vision of end-goals, character education gets chopped into such small pieces

as to have limited relevance to the array of acute challenges confronting high schools

and society. We offer the Eight Strengths of Character as a framework of developmental

outcomes that we think are more commensurate with the need.

8. Spiritual person crafting a life of noble purpose

s Considers existential questions (“What is the meaning of life?”, “What is happiness?”, “What is the

purpose of my life?”)

s Seeks a life of noble purpose

s Formulates life goals and ways to pursue them

s Cultivates an appreciation of transcendent values such as truth, beauty, and goodness

s Pursues authentic happiness

s Possesses a rich inner life

s Pursues deep, meaningful connections—e.g., to others, nature, or a higher power

300 s M. Davidson et al.

FOUR KEY STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF PERFORMANCE

CHARACTER, MORAL CHARACTER, AND THE EIGHT STRENGTHS OF

CHARACTER

In a Smart & Good School, how are performance character, moral character, and the Eight

Strengths of Character developed? Most of our 227-page Smart & Good High Schools

report (Lickona & Davidson, 2005) is devoted to describing nearly a hundred promis-

ing practices, culled from our research, for developing these outcomes. In our ongoing

efforts to implement this model, however, we have found a simpler “master strategy”

emerging that can be applied to any of the Eight Strengths of Character and across dif-

ferent subject areas, co-curricular activities, advisories, remedial assistance, school and

classroom discipline, and any other aspect of schooling. We call this overarching strategy

the “4 KEYS for Developing Performance Character and Moral Character” (4 KEYS for

short). The 4 KEYS are:

1. The Ethical Learning Community (ELC)—developing a community (classroom,

advisory group, team, whole school) that both supports and challenges and

whose members pursue the realization of their own potential for excellence and

ethics and seek to bring out the best in every other person.

2. Self-Study—engaging students in assessing their strengths and areas for growth

in performance character and moral character, setting goals for improvement,

and monitoring their progress.

3. Other-Study—learning from exemplars of performance character and moral

character by analyzing and emulating their pathways to success.

4. Public Performance/Presentation—using public performances and presenta-

tions as experiential learning and authentic assessment of students’ perform-

ance character and moral character.

Let us illustrate each of these 4 KEYS to show their supporting research, diverse practical

applications, and examples of how high schools and teachers have actually used them.

The Ethical Learning Community (ELC). The ﬁrst of the 4 KEYS, the Ethical Learn-

ing Community, recognizes that character develops in and through community, and that

the norms of a community are a potent force in shaping character. Creating an Ethical

Learning Community seeks to take character education beyond its focus on the psycho-

logical assets of the individual to the assets of the culture in which the individual lives

and dwells, the location where the psychological assets are developed. Focusing on creat-

ing an Ethical Learning Community fulﬁlls Kohlberg’s exhortation to “change the life of

the school as well as the development of the individual” (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg,

1989). As Power and colleagues (Power et al., 1989) argue,

The teaching of justice, as the teaching of reading or arithmetic, is set in a context of a

classroom and a school, and how the students experience the life of the classroom and

school will have a shaping effect on what they learn from what the teacher teaches.

(p. 20)

In attempting to map the human ecological system, Garbarino (1990) argues that

the habitat of youth includes “family, friends, neighborhood, church, and school, as well

Smart & Good Schools s 301

as less immediate forces that constitute the social geography and climate (e.g., laws,

institutions, and values), and the physical environment” (p. 78). In its largest dimen-

sions, the Ethical Learning Community is an ecological system comprised of all the

stakeholder groups that affect the culture of the school and the character development

of its members. Those stakeholder groups include faculty and staff, students, parents,

and the wider community. The ideal of an Ethical Learning Community is that all four

of these groups will support and challenge each other in doing their best work (per-

formance character) and being their best ethical selves (moral character). No one is

exempt from the norms of excellence and ethics.

However, this “macro-ELC” is made up of many “micro-ELCs,” such as individual

classrooms, advisory groups, clubs, teams, and other groups. Any group, whatever its

size, will maximize its potential for excellence and ethics if it functions as an Ethical

Learning Community. In deﬁning an Ethical Learning Community as a community that

supports and challenges, we are advocating an environment where participation in the

community means not simply “passing the put-up” (the “warm-fuzzy” stereotype of

character education held by many high school educators) but constantly challenging each

other to be the best person we can be. In many ways, the Ethical Learning Community

seeks to create what Vygotsky (1978) called a zone of proximal development, deﬁned

as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent

problem solving and level of potential development as determined through problem

solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p. 86). An

Ethical Learning Community is a place where we intentionally and proactively struc-

ture opportunities for individuals to pursue their personal best through the assistance of

teachers, parents, or peers.

Our theoretical model of the Ethical Learning Community (Lickona & Davidson,

2005) is supported by our ﬁrst-hand observation of award-winning high schools and

also by relevant theory and/or research (Lickona & Davidson, 2005), including research

on “school connectedness” as a predictor of adolescent ﬂourishing (Resnick et al., 1997);

research on the experience of democratic school community as a predictor of adoles-

cents’ use of their highest available moral reasoning (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989),

reduced discipline problems (Freiberg, 1989), and civic participation after high school

(Grady, 1994); and research showing the power of positive peer pressure to inﬂuence

the behavior even of previously anti-social youth, especially when coupled with direct

instruction in perspective-taking and communication skills (e.g., Gibbs, 2003).

Self-Study. The second of the 4 KEYS is Self-Study. In the Self-Study process, we are

engaging students in assessing their strengths and areas for growth in performance char-

acter and moral character, setting goals for improvement, and monitoring their pro-

gress. Terman and Oden (1959) found that intellectually gifted high school students who

learned to set and pursue goals went on to achieve higher levels of success than equally

gifted students who did not learn to set goals. The goal of Self-Study as a pedagogical

strategy is student engagement and personalization; it seeks to move the locus of control

from outside of the individual to inside the individual. With Self-Study we attempt to

take the character words “off the wall” and to put them inside students’ hearts and minds.

Through Self-Study, students have direct access to plan, monitor, and change their own

behaviors.

In Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), he provides

insight into the importance of Self-Study. He describes “ﬂow” as “deep concentration,

302 s M. Davidson et al.

high and balanced challenges and skills, a sense of control and satisfaction.” He describes

the requirements for ﬂow as:

1. Setting an overall goal and as many sub-goals as realistically feasible;

2. Finding ways of measuring progress in terms of goals chosen;

3. Keeping concentrating on what one is doing to keep making ﬁner and ﬁner dis-

tinctions in the challenges involved in the activity;

4. Developing the skills necessary to interact with the opportunities available;

5. Raising the stakes if the activity becomes boring.

The steps to “ﬂow” is a Self-Study template, a way to assist students in the develop-

ment of a task orientation (Duda & Nicholls, 1992; Nicholls, 1984, 1992). Like

Csikzentmihalyi’s ﬂow theory, the literature on achievement motivation helps us

understand self-study and in particular the relation of self to others. This research

suggests that an ego (or performance) orientation is one where a person is motivated

to show competence in relation to others by showing superiority (e.g., by winning,

getting the most right, being able to list the most kind things done to others),

whereas with a task (or learning) orientation, the person competes against

self-referenced personal achievement (e.g., a better time than before, more right on

this test than last time, fewer unnecessary interruptions of the class today than

yesterday). In addition to facilitating numerous positive performance outcomes

(academic, athletic, and other), a task orientation tends to promote self-reﬂection

and awareness, to support strong intrinsic motivation, and to reduce helpless

response to failure (Duda & Nicholls, 1992; Nicholls, 1984, 1992).

Other-Study. Our third “Key” is “Other-Study.” With Other-Study we have students

study people and products that exemplify performance character and moral character.

From Other-Study, students learn the skills of analyzing and emulating the pathways

to success. Other-Study builds upon social-cognitive learning theory (Bandura, 1977,

1991). “Growing out of behaviorism, social learning theory focuses on the ways in which

individuals learn from others and their surroundings—including the mechanisms of

modeling, imitation, and social reinforcement” (Lapsley, 1996, p. 193). The Other-

Study process helps students understand, internalize, and master the requisite skills for

reproducing high levels of excellence and ethics in their own lives. As Green states: “We

encounter the conscience of craft being formed whenever we observe the novice coming

to adopt the standards of some craft as his or her own” (Green, 1999, p. 61).

Other-Study isn’t just a strategy for studying people as models; it also serves as a

powerful model for studying products of excellence and ethics. For example, Berger

(2003) argues for providing students with examples of beautiful, powerful, important

work created by their fellow students or by professionals. He sees these models as provid-

ing inspiration for students—a standard to strive for. He states:

When my class begins a new project, a new venture, we begin with a taste of excel-

lence. . . . We sit and we admire. We critique and discuss what makes the work

powerful: what makes a piece of a creative writing compelling and exciting; what

makes a scientiﬁc or historical research project signiﬁcant and stirring; what makes

a novel mathematical solution so breath-taking.

(Berger, 2003, p. 31)

Smart & Good Schools s 303

As a strategy for promoting excellence, studying products of excellence challenges stu-

dents to ask: What does excellence look like, where does it come from, what does it take

to create excellence in your own work? Questions like these have the potential to help

students understand better how to develop their own performance character.

Current events are a rich source of both positive and negative examples of charac-

ter. Virtue in Action, an online current events resource (www.virtueinaction.org), offers

compelling in-the-news examples of integrity, compassion, and courage as well as

instances of greed, disrespect, violence, and dishonesty. One Virtue in Action lesson, for

example, featured Shirin Ebadi, the ﬁrst Muslim woman and the ﬁrst person from Iran

to win the Nobel Peace Prize. After presenting a character exemplar such as Shirin Ebadi,

the teacher would have students reﬂect on questions such as the following:

1. What strengths of character enabled this person to do what he or she did?

2. What obstacles did this person have to overcome?

3. What is one character strength possessed by this person that you would like to

develop to a higher degree? Make a plan.

Contemporary and historical examples of man’s inhumanity to man can offer equally

compelling forms of Other-Study. Facing History and Ourselves (www.facing.org) is one

of the 33 programs identiﬁed as having research validation by What Works in Character

Education (Berkowitz & Bier, 2006). An evaluation of this curriculum showed gains in

students’ moral reasoning and relationship maturity as well as reduced ﬁghting and

racist attitudes. Kohlberg argued, “The main experiential determinants of moral devel-

opment seem to be amount and variety of social experience, the opportunity to take a

number of roles and to encounter other perspectives” (1973, p. 96). Other-Study pro-

grams like Facing History clearly provide students opportunities for new roles and per-

spectives.

Regarding the inﬂuence of modeling, Lapsley (1996) argues that the “literature leaves

little question that observing prosocial models can have powerful effects on children”

(p. 193). He argues that prosocial models have been shown to enhance altruistic behavior,

generosity, and resistance to temptation; further, he argues that the effects of modeling

endure over time.

Public Performance/Presentation. The last of the 4 KEYS is public performance or

presentation. Public performance/presentation functions pedagogically for us as both

experiential learning (Kolb, 1983) and authentic assessment (Darling-Hammond, 1993;

Wiggins & McTighe, 1998) of students’ performance character and moral character. For

example, service learning provides a public performance activity that provides students

a chance to “exercise” moral character as they serve others. It gives them an opportunity

to practice moral character “in the real world.” A ten-year compilation of research on

the impact of service learning indicates that it helps develop students’ sense of civic and

social responsibility and citizenship skills, improves school climate, increases respect

between teachers and students, and improves the interpersonal development and ability

to relate to diverse groups (Billig, 2000).

In his book, An Ethic of Excellence: Creating a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students,

master teacher and part-time carpenter Ron Berger (2003) makes a strong case for the

motivational power of presenting one’s work publicly. He points out that for most stu-

dents, the audience for their work is an audience of one—the teacher. For many students,

304 s M. Davidson et al.

that is not audience enough; they don’t care if the teacher gives them a bad grade. More

powerful, Berger says, is a classroom culture where students have to regularly present

your work to their peers and where their peers expect them to do their best. Every student

wants to ﬁt in, and if the peer norm is to do your best work, students will strive to ﬁt in

to that culture.

Essential to creating this kind of classroom is what Berger calls “a culture of critique.” Stu-

dents regularly share their work with the whole class, with the teacher guiding the process.

There are rules for critique: “Be kind; be speciﬁc; be helpful.” Students presenting a piece of

work ﬁrst explain their ideas or goals and state what they are seeking help with. Classmates

begin with positive comments and phrase suggestions as questions: “Would you consider

[e.g., adding X, deleting Y, changing Y, etc.] . . .?” The teacher uses the critique session as

the optimal opportunity for teaching necessary concepts and skills. Following critique ses-

sions, students have the opportunity to use the group feedback to do revisions, sometimes

many revisions. Berger laments that in most schools, students turn in ﬁrst drafts—work

that doesn’t represent their best effort and that is typically discarded after it has been graded

and returned. By contrast, in the workplace, where the quality of one’s work really matters,

one almost never submits a ﬁrst draft. An ethic of excellence requires revision.

Following revision, students present their work to a wider audience. Every ﬁnal draft

students complete is done for some kind of an outside audience—whether a class of

kindergartners, parents, the whole school, the wider community, or the local or state

government. In this kind of classroom, the teacher’s role is not as the sole judge of their

work but rather similar to that of a sports coach or play director—helping them get their

work ready for the public eye.

CONCLUSION

We conclude our chapter with two quotes. The ﬁrst is from Martin Luther King, Jr. On

the evening of his assassination, King addressed the striking sanitation workers of Mont-

gomery, Alabama, with these words:

You must discover what you are made for, and you must work indefatigably to achieve

excellence in your ﬁeld of endeavor. If you are called to be a street sweeper, you

should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music,

or Shakespeare wrote poetry. You should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of

heaven will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

The second quote is from one of the high school teachers in our Smart & Good High

Schools study. He commented:

Students today are growing up in a world where it seems okay to cheat to get ahead.

When I ﬁnd out about an incident of cheating in my class, I give a little talk to my

students:

“There are two roads in life: a high road and a low road. The high road is harder,

but it takes you somewhere worth going. The low road is easy, but it’s circular—you

eventually ﬁnd yourself back where you started. If you cheat now, you’ll cheat later.

Your life won’t get better—and you won’t get better—on the low road.”

Smart & Good Schools s 305

There are certainly many forces, in human nature and in society, that can inﬂuence

young people to take the low road. But we believe that deep within every young person,

there is also a desire to lead a ﬂourishing life. It falls to us as parents and teachers to

point out—and make accessible—the high road of character as the reliable pathway to

a ﬂourishing life. That high road includes both the summons to excellence of which

King spoke and the call to ethical integrity of which the high school teacher spoke.

To prepare our young to lead ﬂourishing lives, we therefore need a broader vision of

character education than the one that has thus far guided the ﬁeld. To date, the ﬁeld has

focused on ethics (moral character) while neglecting excellence (performance charac-

ter). We need to view character education as the intentional integration of excellence and

ethics—the systematic effort to develop performance character, moral character, and the

Eight Strengths of Character through every phase of school life. The academic curric-

ulum, school routines, rituals and traditions, discipline, co-curricular activities, service

learning, and teachable moments all become opportunities to develop the full range of

assets needed for an ethical, productive, and fulﬁlling life.

This broader deﬁnition of character education represents, we think, a paradigm shift

for the ﬁeld. It is, we think, an essential paradigm shift for character education in high

schools—because it makes character education directly relevant to the school’s central

mission of teaching and learning.

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308

AN APPLICATION OF KOHLBERG’S THEORY OF

MORAL DILEMMA DISCUSSION TO THE JAPANESE

CLASSROOM AND ITS EFFECT ON MORAL DEVELOPMENT

OF JAPANESE STUDENTS

Noriyuki Araki

The goal of this chapter is to share what we have learned from our efforts to transform

and update moral education within public schools in Japan. Much criticism has been

directed toward the present Japanese method of moral education for its inculcative and

indoctrinaire nature that ignores students’ autonomous reasoning. The students often

express frustration that moral education classes are simply boring and uninteresting,

or that the conclusions to be drawn from the classes are easily predictable (Mase, 1987;

Sano,1985).

Given such criticisms, we have so far attempted:

1. To sustain the original objective of traditional moral education to foster the

growth of “good” people, while also breaking down the long-held myth that

indoctrination of certain moral values is almost unavoidable in any effort to

attain that goal.

2. From the perspectives of cognitive development, to help students develop their

own views and thoughts from which moral judgments can be drawn.

3. To create a classroom environment where the students can feel free to relate

their own life experiences in the discussion of moral problems, rather than

moving toward predetermined conclusions for hypothetical and abstract situ-

ations established by the curriculum.

In short, we have applied Kohlberg’s (Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) method of

moral education to make classroom moral discussion more interesting and fruitful, and

to enable the students to think and analyze according to their autonomous reasoning. It

is our fundamental principle to try to avoid the imposition of values so that the

students can truly enjoy the class and develop their own intellectual skills (Araki, 1987,

1988a, 1990b, 1990c, 1993a, 1993b, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, 2002a, 2002b, 2005a, 2005b,

2012, 2013).

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 309

In order to apply Kohlberg’s approach to moral education in Japan, we formed “The

Society for the Study of Moral Education” in 1982. We changed the name of our organ-

ization to “The Society for the Study of Moral Development” in 1984 and to “The Japan

Society for Studies of Educational Practices on Moral Development” in 2001. This year

is the 30th anniversary of our founding. Throughout this period, we have tried to review

and develop our methods to effectively incorporate Kohlberg’s method into the Japanese

educational context.

As is well-known and discussed in this handbook (see chapter by Snarey and Samuelson)

Kohlberg (1969) proposed a cognitive-developmental theory of moral growth, follow-

ing the philosophy of John Dewey who stated the goal of education as to have children

develop. Such factors as the experience of discussing moral and cognitive dilemmas and

opportunities for role-taking were thought to be very important for moral develop-

ment. On the basis of this view, we conducted a series of classes, in which students were

given stories with moral dilemmas in them, and allowed to participate in open-ended

moral discussion. Many of these classroom practices proved to be effective (Araki, 1988a;

Inoue, 1985; Ohnshi, Tokunaga, Sugimoto, Araki, & Naito, 1990; Sakurai, 1992; Tateishi,

1986). For more detailed descriptions of the research activities, and a critical review of

the classroom applications, see also Fujita (1985), Morioka (1987, 1992), Naito (1987),

Sano (1985), Yamagishi (1985a, 1985b), and Yamauchi (1986). This chapter reviews this

work. It describes the structure of moral dilemma classes and the moral dilemmas that

were employed, and the results of analyses on the effects on student moral growth. The

effects discussed include the degree to which students developed their moral reasoning,

and their ability to perform expected social roles after they had participated in the class.

Three statistical methods were employed to measure the effects: meta-analysis (Imae,

1985; Iwawaki, 1986); pre-post scores in relation to classroom participation; and assess-

ments of teaching.

MORAL EDUCATION IN JAPAN

Moral education in Japan is largely based on a set of top-down mandates that apply to

the entire educational system. Moral education today is conducted within classes speciﬁ-

cally designated for this purpose as well as occasionally within selected subject matter

classes (e.g., foreign language activity, the period for integrated studies and special activ-

ities). The designated “moral education” classes are specially set up to provide discrete

training for 1 hour per week (45 hours per year). The aim of the class is for students to

increase moral sensitivity, improve moral judgment, and improve motivation and atti-

tudes towards moral practices in order to facilitate their engagement in moral action

(Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, 2008).

In 1987, Fujita introduced “character education” as practiced in the US as an example

of educational practice that encourages “internal consciousness about moral values,” and

argued that moral education in primary and junior high schools in Japan should adopt

this approach. While making this proposal Fujita (1987) also admitted that a central

goal of character education is “to transfer a moral inheritance” and that there is a risk

of falling into indoctrination (a forcing of values). Fujita further argued that a char-

acter education approach is limited by an “arbitrariness of the value content intended

to teach to children, and a teaching method which does not secure rediscovery of the

value by a child” (pp. 106–135). Thus, the character education approach amounts to

310 s N. Araki

practices that he ultimately criticized as emblematic of the practices already widespread

in Japanese schools. Araki (1990a) concurred with Fujita’s views and provided a critical

analysis of the traditional Japanese approach to moral education that shared many of the

same assumptions and practices being touted by proponents of the adoption of US based

forms of character education. He identiﬁed ﬁve characteristic practices of traditional

Japanese moral education:

1. Show a normative model and tell children that it is to be followed.

2. Tell children the necessity of particular moral values and make sure the stu-

dents can recall them.

3. Make children choose a given value from the set of values that are accepted by

the adults.

4. Control children by rules, and discipline them to accept such rules without

thinking.

5. Control children’s behavior so that the feeling of a guilty conscience may work

against any violation of regulations.

Araki then summarized the downsides of these characteristics when embedded

within typical applications in the Japanese classroom from the learner’s point of

view. First, the focus of such lessons conducted from a classical approach to moral

education constituting a “forcing of value” do not connect with the concerns or

interests of children. Such abstract approaches to values do not touch upon how the

children live, how they spend time with their friends, and what they want to be and

so on. According to Araki, it is these concerns that should be the center of attention

in moral education. However, as practiced in Japan, the students simply make a con-

fession, give the appearance of reﬂection, and then listen to a sermon. Children in

this educational framework are surely in a defensive position, and while there might

be a teacher’s turn in this framework, there is no turn for the children (Araki, 1990a).

Second, children often already understand the value which they are presumably to

learn from the beginning of the lesson, or they just think “this has nothing to do with

me.” As a result the responses from the children become stereotypical, public, or

idealistic, and the lesson is therefore pointless. Third, during a lesson, active inter-

action between children and between teacher and children is nonexistent. Instead,

children are watching out for the teacher’s mood and try to align themselves with the

teacher’s aim and expectations.

Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of criticism from school teachers directed at the

character education and traditional moral pedagogy since the advent of moral educa-

tion in postwar Japan when it became educational policy beginning in 1958. Criticisms

include: “teaching materials are dominated by feelings and attitudes towards morality”;

“the contents are too hypocritical and heart-warming”; “it does not ﬁt with their usual

way of life”; “it tends to become forcing of value”; and teachers were not positively con-

cerned with moral education. Furthermore, children reported that moral education class

was “tedious,” “not fun,” and “answers are already known.” In these circumstances, the

normative consciousness of children is weakened and rich human relationships are lost;

there are continuous problematic behaviors such as school truancy, school bullying, and

violence among children in Japanese primary and junior high schools in the twenty-ﬁrst

century.

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 311

THE DEVELOPMENTAL ALTERNATIVE FOR MORAL EDUCATION AS

APPLIED IN JAPAN

Classroom Models: Procedures and Materials

The Japan Society for Studies of Educational Practices on Moral Development provided

an alternative intended to address the limitations of the traditional approach to moral

education. In considering how to plan our approach to moral education we reviewed

the guidance for conducting moral dilemma discussions provided by Kohlberg and his

colleagues in several sources (e.g., Beyer, 1976; Galbraith & Jones, 1975; Kohlberg, Colby,

Fenton, Speicher-Dubin, & Lieberman, 1975). However, the procedures described were

by and large intended for use in one-hour time segments at the junior high school and

senior high school level. When we examined them to see if they could be applied to

the schools that we worked with in Japan, we identiﬁed various limitations. A central

concern was that the time allotted for issue discussions was judged to be too short for

a typical Japanese classroom (comprising 40 students) to share an understanding of

the dilemma or to discuss and focus on the point at issue (Araki, 1985). Therefore, we

designed an approach to classroom moral discussion that focused upon a single theme

over a two-hour time-frame (see Table 18.1). In the ﬁrst hour, students are engaged in

an initial effort to understand the basic issues being presented in the situation, and to

form some tentative decisions about what to do. The instructors employ these emerging

student-identiﬁed themes to shape the ensuing discussion. The focus of the second hour

is the moral discussion, through which students are asked to consider the competing

moral values or concerns that are involved, and in what ways the students might resolve

the problem, while trying to take into account the various roles of the people engaged in

the situations.

The procedure described in Table 18.1 is for middle and upper grade elemen-

tary school students and may also be used with students at the junior and senior high

school levels. For the lower elementary grades, the class procedure is compressed into a

one-hour framework and students are not required to write down their judgments in

notebooks. Instead they are asked to form groups of those who have come to the same

judgments, and to express themselves through action or role-taking, rather than through

simple verbal discussions. In this way younger children are better able to visualize and

grasp their differences in viewpoints than would be achieved through standard discus-

sion formats.

We provided the following general guidelines to teachers to help them conduct these

discussions.

1. Reduce or eliminate if possible elements of the classroom atmosphere that

would convey to students the notion that the positions they express are being

evaluated by their teachers, or that the objective of the discussion is to arrive

at the “right answer” consistent with the viewpoint being presented by

teachers.

2. Arrange desks and chairs so that students can see and hear one another very

well.

3. Listen to students’ voluntary statements, and respect the trend of their discus-

sion, without restricting discourse to a preset plan made by the teacher in

advance.

Table 18.1 A Model of Classroom Moral Dilemma Discussion Process

Period Times Guidance Process Contents Thought

1st hour 10–35 mins Presentation of moral dilemma (reading of

materials)

Teacher clariﬁes characters and contents of dilemma and helps

pupils sympathize with the protagonist

Individual

Length of talking depends on the reading (mutual

understanding of the situation)

Students talk to one another to promote self-involvement

(empathy), and also to avoid misunderstanding of the situations

Group

10–25 mins Judgments/reasoning for the ﬁrst hour Pupils are asked to write on cards answers to questions like “What

should he/she do?” “Why? For what reason?”

Individual

Things the teacher does after completing period 1:

s#LASSIFYTHEREASONINGCARDSOFPARTANDPREPARETHEMFORPERIOD

s#HECKTHEGUIDINGQUESTIONSTOBEASKEDINPERIOD

s-AKEINSTRUCTIONPLANFORPERIOD

2nd hour 5–10 mins Recheck the moral dilemma At the beginning of the second hour students share their

understanding of the situation. They conﬁrm points at issue in

mutual understanding

Group

7–10 mins Write down questions/opinions on the judgment/

reasoning cards of other pupils

On the cards in which reasonings of all classmates are listed and

classiﬁed makes students aware of reasoning from different viewpoints

Individual

7–15 mins Criticize/evaluate one’s own judgment and that of

other classmates (Discussion 1)

Discuss among classmates different judgments drawn from various

points of view and clarify the conﬂicting points in opinions (to be

done in classroom/group discussion)

Group

10–15 mins Synthesize one’s own opinions with those of

others (Discussion 2)

Depending on their own notes they mutually criticize/examine

different reasoning derived from different positions. In the

exchange of views they bring points of discussion to a focus

Group

5–8 mins Judgments/reasoning for the second hour To think about once again what the story character should (must)

do with the dilemmas she/he faces and choose the most convincing

reasoning for the ﬁnal judgment

Individual

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 313

4. Respect communication among students, especially promoting the exchange of

views between students who are within one developmental stage of each other,

bearing in mind the limitations of reliance upon this “plus-one” strategy iden-

tiﬁed in prior research (Berkowitz & Gibbs, 1983).

5. Finally, develop the necessary skills and abilities needed to conduct effective

classroom discussions (for example, to establish rules relating to how students

should pose questions, opinions, counterarguments) and the skills to introduce

additional comments and picking up of supporting arguments. Develop a

warm, accepting classroom atmosphere.

Within the broad framework just outlined, the process for moral discussion was

comprised of four different stages or phases. In the ﬁrst phase at the very beginning

of instruction, the teacher’s primary responsibility is to insure that each student

clearly understands the core elements of the focal dilemma. Not all students can be

expected to immediately comprehend or identify the dilemmas contained in a given

story or situation. Some students may show a clear sign of immediate comprehen-

sion but others may take much longer. In addition some students may avoid address-

ing the moral conﬂict and try to come up with a pragmatic solution to the given

problem. Therefore, the instructor is responsible for fostering students’ understand-

ings of the moral dilemma confronted by the main characters of the story. Slow and

careful reading of the story, making repeated pauses and reviews whenever appropri-

ate, are some well-known strategies teachers may employ to reduce incorrect and

arbitrary interpretations. In addition, teachers may pose questions to students that

(1) check for story comprehension, (2) ask students to relate their life experience to

the story, and (3) center around particular elements of the situation that the teacher

anticipates will be challenging for the students to comprehend or recognize as critical

to the situation.

In the second stage in the discourse process the focus of the teacher is on support-

ing students’ efforts at expressing their initial reactions or responses to the focal moral

dilemma. The teacher’s role is to help students to arrive at and clarify their own posi-

tions. Teachers pose clarifying questions and direct students to consider the opinions of

their classmates.

The third stage involves actual moral discussion which constitutes the core of the

class. What must be done at this stage is to enable the students to clarify the reasoning

process from which their moral judgments are to be drawn. It is also important to expose

the students to forms of moral argument that will cause them to experience the cogni-

tive conﬂict that will generate a shift in their own moral reasoning structures. As was

mentioned above the teacher’s role is to create a classroom climate that will ensure frank

exchange of the opinions among students, which can eventually move toward the ﬁnal

student resolution or judgments. To generate cognitive imbalance and hopefully foster

growth in students’ moral development, teachers are encouraged to pose several types

of questions. First are questions that expose the students to higher stage reasoning than

they currently use. Second are questions that help students to engage in appropriate role-

taking for each story character. Third are questions that make them speculate about the

general consequences that one particular action might generate in the lives of others.

In the ﬁnal stage, the students are directed to draw ﬁnal moral judgments. The

teacher in this phase of the lesson summarizes and coordinates the differing views and

314 s N. Araki

conclusions being offered so that each student may take into account the whole range of

diverse opinions to determine his/her own ﬁnal position.

Moral Dilemma Materials

In order to develop children’s morality, we need to have them experience moral disequi-

librium or moral value conﬂict (Power et al., 1989). The materials employed to generate

cognitive conﬂict present situations that are characterized by competing values or com-

peting needs of protagonists such that resolution is perceived as difﬁcult by students due

to the situational ambiguity about what is morally right. A morally “unbalanced” state

evokes children’s awareness of the necessity of seeking out a resolution, motivates them

to ﬁgure out the resolution, and promotes their efforts to restore equilibrium (Araki,

1984, 2010; Araki & Noguchi, 1987; Araki & Tokunaga et al., 1989). Altogether Araki

and colleagues (2008) constructed 182 moral dilemma situations for use in primary and

secondary Japanese classrooms with accompanying guides (Araki, 2012, 2013).

As noted above, a story that has moral value conﬂicts is presented at the beginning of

a lesson. There are two types, depending on the complexity of the dilemma structure.

As shown in Figure 18.1, for lower grade students, the material deals with a value

conﬂict with a single value (Type I). For instance, in the moral dilemma story named

“corn harvest” constructed by Forita Yashunaga, the issue focuses on how to distribute

harvested corn among the friends who helped grow the corn. In this story, different ways

of distribution should be examined from the perspective of what is most equitable to

each of the individual contributors. This story deals with the moral value of “fairness and

justice” (Araki, 1993a).

For higher grade students, the moral material deals with conﬂicts among multiple

values (Type II). For example, in the material titled “Kira in Southern Island” constructed

by Matsuo Hirofumi, the two values of “loving one’s hometown” and “awareness of roles

and responsibility” are pitted against one another:

Kira, a village mayor, has been dreaming about establishing new industry on Kaura

island which has suffered from depopulation. A good offer for new development has

come in, but if accepted, Kaura’s rich natural environment will suffer and be drasti-

cally damaged. Kira is distressed about making this decision.

We should note here that the stories do not deal with conﬂicts between value and

counter-value such as “strong and weak” will or “good and evil,” such as in the case of

whether a person should walk a dog while he wants to play with the computer (Araki,

1996a).

EVALUATION OF THE MORAL DILEMMA CLASSROOM

Meta-Analytical Evaluations

There are six published research papers that report the outcomes of the approach to

moral education employing the instructional model described above (Aragaki, 1990;

Hara, 1991; Matuo, 1991; Noguchi, 1987; Suzuki, 1988; Yaegashi, 1985). In this section

of the chapter we report on the results of a meta-analysis combining the effects of these

individual studies. The research reported by Yaegashi (1985) analyzed a series of moral

dilemma classes conducted for ﬁfth grade pupils over a one year period. In this project,

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 315

Tokunaga taught the experimental group (dilemma discussion) classes of 12 hours with

six different topics based on Kohlberg’s theory. During the same period, he also con-

ducted a series of comparison group classes that employed the traditional type of moral

education common to Japan (similar to character education in the US). In these classes

she allocated one class hour for one moral topic.

Suzuki (1988) compared the outcomes of a ﬁfth grade experimental group taught

under his own instruction (eight hours for four topics) employing Kohlberg’s theory,

along with a control classroom of the same grade taught by a traditional method at a

school of equal size. Aragaki (1990) made a similar comparative analysis comparing two

months of dilemma based instruction to an experimental group of sixth grade (eight

hours for four topics) and a control group at another school employing traditional char-

acter education teaching methods. The Hara (1991) study compared an experimental

group of ﬁfth grade children he had instructed for two months using Kohlberg’s method

(eight class hours with four moral topics), with a control group of the same grade chil-

dren also taught by Hara for the same instructional but using the traditional method. In

both classes, the same moral topics were discussed.

Still another comparative study was conducted by Noguchi (1987) who measured

outcomes with two groups at the junior high school level. Noguchi taught the moral

dilemma based lessons for the experimental group. The classes for this experimental

group were conducted over two extended sessions: one of which lasted three months

with ﬁve class hours allocated for three different topics, and the other that lasted ﬁve

months with eight class hours allocated for ﬁve topics. The control group for this study

was taught by the eighth grade homeroom teacher with traditional methods. Instruc-

tion for the eighth grade students in the former group was initially provided by Noguchi

himself but was later taken over by the homeroom teacher.

Finally, Matsuo’s (1991) comparative research compared the outcomes from two

experimental instructional conditions with a traditional approach to moral/character

education. In one of these experimental conditions instruction focused upon the use

of role play to enact the moral issues and conﬂicts within given situations. The second

experimental classroom employed discussion of moral situations or dilemmas. Each

class lasted two months and was allocated over six class hours for three moral topics.

Resolution of value

conflict with multiple

values (Type II)

Resolution of value

conflict with single

value (Type I)

Middle

school

Elementary

school

1st–6th

grade

Figure 18.1 Two Types of Moral Dilemma.

316 s N. Araki

Analyses explored the outcomes on moral reasoning and perspective-taking of the two

experimental and the control classroom.

The above studies all used a pre- and post-test design examining the impact of instruc-

tion on several messages. These were (1) the Japanese Version of Moral Judgment Test

(MJT) (Araki, Yaegashi, & Maeda, 1986), (2) the Japanese Version of Role Taking Ability

Test (Selman Type Test) (Araki, 1988b), and (3) Social-Perspective Test for Junior High

School students. In the Yaegashi (1985) and Noguchi (1987) classes, the Role Taking

Test was omitted. In order to express the observed effect of the Kohlberg based method

employed in each experimental group, we calculated an Effect Size (ES, *1). The mean

ﬁgures provided in Tables 18.2 and 18.3 correspond to the collective average of students’

moral stage in each class (i.e., point 1 is granted to the class that collectively represents

moral stage 1, and one extra point is added as each class moves up one moral stage). The

standard deviation has been calculated from these ﬁgures. Table 18.2 represents the ES of

the Moral Judgment Test while Table 18.3 shows that of the Role Taking Ability Test.

From the numbers shown in Table 18.2, we can calculate that the arithmetic average

of all the control groups among the ﬁfth grade children is 1.64. That of the sixth grade

children is 1.78, 2.57 for the seventh grade, and 2.85 for the eighth grade accordingly.

These ﬁgures indicate that moral stage is accelerated as the students’ age and learning

experience increase. Development of the students’ role-taking ability also shows a similar

trend. The ﬁfth grade children on average are rated as stage 1.66 and the sixth grade and

the seventh grade 1.86 and 2.62 respectively. Increase in age affects role-taking ability just

as it does in the case of moral judgment. It was also observed that the development of the

students’ role-taking ability occurs in earlier ages than that of their moral judgment.

Table 18.2 indicates that out of the nine classes surveyed, all but one class showed

positive ES ﬁgures on the development of students’ moral stage. The average ES ﬁgure of

all nine classes is 0.38 with its standard deviation 0.19. From this data, we can conclude

that interventions produced moderate effects in the classes where it was employed. The

effect on the development of students’ role-taking ability is more considerable. Table

18.3 shows that the average ES ﬁgure of all ﬁve classes surveyed is 0.71 with its standard

deviation 0.22. Suzuki’s class obtained a considerably higher ﬁgure of 1.1. Matsuo who

took up Role-Taking itself as the experimental variables discovered that while the ES

Table 18.2 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Students’ Moral Development

Elementary School Junior High School

Yaegashi

(Grade 5)

Suzuki

(Grade 5)

Hara

(Grade 5)

Aragaki

(Grade 6)

Noguchi

(Grade 7)

Noguchi

(Grade 8)

Noguchi

(Grade 9)

Matsuo

(Grade 7)

EG CG EG CG EG CG EG CG EG CG EG CG EG CG EG1 CG EG2

N 27 24 14 32 32 32 41 37 28 33 35 35 39 40 34 34 32

M 1.96 1.75 2.14 1.81 1.66 1.38 2.07 1.78 2.78 2.60 2.74 2.57 2.82 2.85 2.61 2.26 2.50

SD 0.74 0.60 0.52 0.63 0.59 0.54 0.60 0.62 0.41 0.64 0.49 0.59 0.54 0.47 0.72 0.55 0.55

ES 0.35 0.52 0.52 0.47 0.28 0.29 –0.06 0.64 0.44

Notes

EG = Experimental Group; CG = Control Group.

N, M, SD, and ES are averages of moral developmental stages measured by the MJT.

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 317

ﬁgure in the class focused on group discussion exercise is 0.58, the class focused on the

role-taking exercise obtained a very high ﬁgure of 0.67.

From the survey of results of the meta-analysis presented above, it can be concluded

that Kohlberg’s method produced a greater effect on the students’ moral development

than the traditional method, and that its effect was considerable especially on the devel-

opment of students’ role-taking ability.

Outcomes of evaluations employing pre- and post-test designs

In the ﬁeld of educational research in general, we often conduct comparative tests,

experiments, or surveys in order to determine whether a certain type of educational plan

is effective or not. This is usually done by observing the change in students’ perform-

ance after relevant educational treatment is given, or by comparing the scores they have

obtained before and after such a treatment. This kind of method is frequently employed

as a way of measuring the effect of a certain educational model, since under this method

there is no need to set up a control group for the statistical purpose. Having discussed

in the previous section nine studies conducted by the meta-statistical method, I would

like in this section to analyze the results of two additional studies employing pre- and

post-test assessments Horita (1992) and Ueda (1992) without the inclusion of control

groups.

These studies examined the impact of eight class hours of moral discussion with

fourth and ﬁfth grade students. The effect of these two classes is examined by comparing

the scores of the Moral Judgment Test obtained by the students in these classes (experi-

mental groups only) and those obtained by the nine experimental groups together with

the eight control groups shown in Table 18.2. To see the comparative difference or effect

after Kohlberg’s method is introduced in class, both pre-test scores (before the relevant

educational treatment is given) and post-test scores (after the relevant educational treat-

ment is given) are compared. In the same way, the pre-class and post-class scores on the

Role Taking Ability Test are also compared. The scores have been obtained by the two

experimental groups of Horita and Ueda, and by the seven experimental groups as well

as four control groups cited in Table 18.3.

The score distributions of the entire number of students on the Moral Judgment Test

and Role Taking Ability Test are shown in Table 18.4 and 18.5 respectively. Although most

students’ moral judgment scores remained the same, a score increase is more promi-

nent among the experimental groups than the control groups. Regarding Role Taking

Ability, there was no signiﬁcant score change observed among the control groups, while

a majority in the experimental groups showed some increase.

Table 18.3 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Development of Students’ Role-taking Ability

Suzuki (Grade 5) Hara (Grade 5) Aragaki (Grade 6) Matsuo (Grade 7)

EG CG EG CG EG CG EG1 CG EG2

N 14 32 32 32 41 37 34 31 32

M 2.50 1.81 1.78 1.50 2.27 1.86 2.94 2.90 2.62

SD 0.50 0.63 0.60 0.61 0.70 0.58 0.59 0.53 0.48

ES 1.1 0.46 0.74 0.67 0.58

318 s N. Araki

In order to determine whether or not these results truly indicate any statistical

signiﬁcance on moral stage growth, the effect ﬁgures of both the experimental and

control groups were recalculated by adopting the following method. If, after the class,

the group moved two moral stages higher than before the class, two points were

granted to the group score. Likewise, if it moves one stage higher, one point is given,

and no point is given if the group remains in the same stage. Following the same

manner, negative points of –1 and –2 were given if the group shows the decrease in

its moral stage. The mean ﬁgures and standard deviation of both the Moral Judg-

ment Test and Role Taking Ability Test have been calculated by this method for both

the experimental and control groups. Our analyses revealed that the control group

had obtained the average effect score of 0.05 on both tests, which indicates no signi-

ﬁcant increase in moral stages at all. On the other hand, the experimental group had

obtained the effect score of 0.34 on the Moral Judgment Test, which indicates an

average increase of one-third moral stage, and on the Role Taking Ability Test, as

well, the score they had obtained is 0.4, which is equivalent to an average increase of

the two-ﬁfths moral stage. These gaps in the effect scores between the two groups are

statistically signiﬁcant. The relevant statistical ﬁgures of the Moral Judgment Test are;

t(604) = 6.118, p < 0.001 and those of the Role Taking Ability Test are; t(340) = 6.601,

p < 0.001. The discovery of an average increase of one-third moral stage on the moral

judgment test, which owes to the use of Kohlberg’s method, is consistent with the con-

clusion of the research conducted by Blatt and Kohlberg (1975), in which an average

Table 18.4 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Moral Stage Across Studies

Moral Stage (Post-Test)

Moral Stage (Pre-Test) I II III IV Total

I 41 (48) 58 (16) 6 (0) 0 (0) 105 (64)

II 2 (6) 87 (85) 55 (20) 0 (0) 144 (111)

III 1 (2) 15 (15) 64 (71) 8 (3) 88 (91)

IV 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 2 (1) 2 (1)

Total 44 (56) 160 (116) 125 (91) 10 (4) 339 (267)

Note

Numbers in parentheses represent control groups.

Table 18.5 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Role-taking Ability Across Studies

Role-Taking (Post-Test)

Role-Taking (Pre-Test) I II III IV Total

I 26 (33) 32 (9) 4 (0) 0 (0) 62 (42)

II 1 (4) 61 (53) 37 (8) 0 (0) 99 (65)

III 0 (0) 0 (3) 40 (22) 8 (0) 48 (25)

IV 0 (0) 0 (1) 0 (0) 0 (1) 2 (1)

Total 27 (37) 93 (66) 81 (30) 8 (0) 209 (133)

Note

Numbers in parentheses represent control groups.

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 319

increase of one-third moral stage was found among experimental groups after 12

hours of moral discussion classes over a period of 12 weeks. The fact that the repeated

application of Kohlberg’s method has enhanced moral development (moral reason-

ing and role-taking) of the students strongly supports Kohlberg’s (1969) fundamental

belief that the essential objective of moral education should be to promote students’

moral judgment ability.

EVIDENCE OF FACTORS THAT SUPPORT EFFECTIVE MORAL DILEMMA

CLASSROOMS

The work described above indicates that the use of discussion techniques proposed by

Kohlberg and his colleagues (Power et al., 1989) some time ago continues to have relev-

ance within Japanese classrooms. Moreover, the work that our colleagues have conducted

has amply demonstrated that the introduction of discourse methods contributes to our

students’ growth and development in ways that are not achieved through traditional

classroom pedagogy. What we have been working on more recently are ways to charac-

terize or capture the impact of such pedagogy from the perspectives of the participating

children. We have organized the process of lessons centering on moral discussion on the

assumption that the moral dilemma method is one that engages students directly in their

own activity of problem-solving directed at solutions to open-ended moral problems.

In this educational approach, we expected children to take the lead in lessons as a result

of increasing intrinsic motivation for resolving moral-value conﬂicts. Araki (1990a)

summarized feedback from 33 children who participated for the ﬁrst time in a moral

dilemma classroom into the following ﬁve categories: (1) the lesson was fun; (2) there is

no regular answer; (3) I could express my thoughts ﬁrmly; (4) I could hear different ideas

from different people; and (5) it took two hours to ﬁnish a lesson. With the exception of

the ﬁnal observation about the length of the class, the focus of student reactions was on

elements of the class that connected directly to their own experiences of engagement and

intellectual stimulation.

Observational data and analyses of classroom interactions in the context of moral

issue discussions are also collected. We have integrated three methods: (1) Category

Analysis System using “Interaction Analysis Categories” (Flanders, 1970); (2) Categories

for the Analysis of “Small Group Interaction” (Bales, 1950); and (3) S-T analysis (Fujita

and Yoshimoto, 1980). Here, I will focus on (1) and (3). Flanders’ Interaction Analysis

Categories (FIAC) method is one of the most popular and most widely used methods

for class improvement in Japan. However, there are only two out of 10 categories in

Flanders’ (1970) system regarding children. Therefore, we employed a modiﬁed version

that includes codes for children’s actions in our work examining the characteristics of

successful moral discussion classrooms. The work I will focus upon here employed the

“Face Diagram” modiﬁcation of Flanders’ coding developed by the Okayama Educa-

tion Centre. This Okayama method uses 15 categories for analysis including seven cat-

egories of teacher’s expression (nod, compliment, question, lecture, order, criticism, and

so on), and ﬁve categories of children’s expression (simple response, autonomy response,

adding, question, and counterview), and three categories (silence, teacher’s operation,

and children’s operation). The category analysis of the expression of a teacher and a

student is conducted every four seconds. A “face diagram” analysis (Chernoff, 1973) is

conducted based on this result.

320 s N. Araki

Flanders’ Observational Coding and “Face Diagram” Analysis

A face diagram is a drawing of a student’s face in which aspects of the face graphi-

cally represent components of student engagement and overall motivation for learn-

ing. Each portion of a face corresponds to an item assessed as a “stage point,” and by

assigning points to a given aspect of the face diagram we could know instantly how

the class was functioning. For example, an opening and inclination of eyes expresses

a Pupil Initiation Rate (PIR), and an opening of a mouth expresses the Pupil Talk

Rate (PT). In other words, if the eyes are opened and inclined, and mouth is opened,

it shows that children in the classroom are expressing ideas actively and articulately.

Furthermore, the size of an ear expresses a teacher talk rate, and the more remarks of

teachers and corresponding “listenings” of students in the class there are, the bigger

the ear is. Finally, the wrinkles on the forehead express a student’s confusion and

silence, and the width of a nostril express the receptive attitudes of teachers towards

students’ remarks. Thus as explained so far, the “face diagram” helps us to visually

understand the characteristics of a classroom.

Araki, Morimoto, and Suzuki (2011) reported the results of the face diagram ana-

lysis of three moral dilemma classrooms for ﬁfth graders of primary schools using

CNR (Category Number Recorder) interaction analysis software. Common features

of the face diagram among the ﬁrst hours of three lessons were as follows. (1) Almost

no silence and children are engaged in the lesson without displaying signs of confu-

sion. (2) Many mutual utterances among children and high motivation for learning

were observed. Since the eyes are opening up a little, the children are taking the lesson

positively. The common features of face diagrams in the second hour of three lessons

were as follows. (1) As the length of an ear is quite short and the width of an ear is

quite large, the teacher’s utterances are quite few whereas children’s listening is rather

long. (2) Almost no silence and children are engaged in the lessons without being

puzzled. Many mutual utterances among children, and high motivation for learning

were seen. (3) Since the width of a nostril is standard, the teacher has responded with

a receptive attitude to children’s remarks, and the children have attended to the lesson

in comfort. (4) Since the bridge of the nose is a little elevated, the children seemed to

be working for an extended time, and thus achieved a sense of accomplishment and

assurance.

In the ﬁrst hours of the lesson, a number of problems can be pointed out from the

proﬁle such as the time for the children to listen to the teachers was too long, and

the students’ remarks were rather sporadic. However, from the viewpoint of primary

characteristics of moral dilemma lessons where pupils need to cultivate a shared

understanding of moral dilemma, and make decisions by connecting the dilemma

with their everyday lives within the ﬁrst hours of the lesson, this face diagram well-

represented such characteristics of introduction to the moral dilemma content. The

second hour of the lesson is, on the other hand, expected to unfold using moral dis-

cussion as a core feature. In particular, children are expected to lead the lesson on

their own by using a mutual nomination method. The role of the teacher turns into

that of a catalyst, engaging in actions such as smoothing the discussion or introduc-

ing the opportunity of role acquisition and attention to contradictory viewpoints.

The face diagram obtained at this point in the lesson was considered to be reﬂecting

those points.

Kohlberg’s Theory in the Japanese Classroom s 321

S-T Analysis of Classroom Engagement

S-T analysis is a method employed to critically analyze whether a lesson is performed

under the active talk led by the students, or developed by the lead of teachers. This is

done by focusing on the teaching-learning process of a lesson and analyzing the emerg-

ing pattern of a teacher’s actions (T-activity) and a student’s action (S-activity) taking

place during the lesson. Beginning with the lesson onset the subject of a given action is

recorded either as student (S) or a teacher (T) at 30 second intervals. Actions recorded

as T-activity include exposition, suggestion, writing on the blackboard, questions, and

criticism, and so on. Actions recorded as S-activity include thinking, expression, pre-

sentation, experiment, operation, acting, choral speaking, and so on. In this study, six

moral dilemma lessons conducted among a class of ﬁfth graders were analyzed (Araki,

1987). Table 18.6 shows the activities, occupancy, and conversion ratios of the ﬁrst half

hour and the second half hour of each of six lessons (total of 12 analysing points).

An average number of activities within 12 analysing points were 37.4 times for teach-

ers, and 53.1 times for students, and the average number of activities of students were

signiﬁcantly higher than that of teachers (F

(1,20)

= 7.10, p < 0.05), and this was more pro-

nounced for the second half than the ﬁrst half of an hour (t

(10)

= 2.9, p < 0.05). Regarding

the activity occupancy based on S-T analysis, students’ were signiﬁcantly higher than

teachers’ (F = 532.77, p < 0.001), and there was signiﬁcant main effect of interaction

between the ﬁrst half and the second half of lessons (F = 5.71, p < 0.05). Regarding the

conversion ratio, the average was 0.21 for both the ﬁrst half and the second half that is

rather low. According to the S-T binary time-series data, the lesson was advanced con-

sistently by active talk centering on a student in a free atmosphere.

The results of these observational analyses of classroom interactions indicate that the

outcomes associated with the introduction of dilemma discussion were associated with

classroom practices that fostered student engagement and student dialogue. Thus, we can

conclude that the activities that took place within the classrooms afﬁliated with efforts to

Table 18.6 Characteristics of Moral Dilemma Class by S-T Analysis

Moral Dilemma Class Practice Frequency of Behavior Occupation Rate Turn Rate

Teachers Students Teachers Students

What to do leader 1st half-hour 72 71 0.27 0.73 0.23

2nd half-hour 39 80 0.25 0.75 0.28

Michiko’s doll 1st half-hour 51 60 0.27 0.73 0.19

2nd half-hour 37 54 0.16 0.84 0.19

Flawed vase 1st half-hour 47 81 0.29 0.71 0.24

2nd half-hour 40 55 0.16 0.84 0.23

Let’s make a symbol 1st half-hour 41 45 0.10 0.90 0.18

2nd half-hour 19 47 0.08 0.92 0.16

Marathon meet 1st half-hour 28 37 0.26 0.74 0.23

2nd half-hour 16 40 0.17 0.83 0.21

Fun and games 1st half-hour 32 31 0.25 0.74 0.18

2nd half-hour 27 36 0.25 0.83 0.19

M (SD) 1st half-hour 45.2 (14.4) 54.2 (18,0) 0.24 (0.06) 0.76 (0.06) 0.21 (0.03)

M (SD) 2nd half-hour 29.5 (9.6) 52.0 (14.2) 0.17 (0.05) 0.82 (0.06) 0.21 (0.04)

322 s N. Araki

change the nature of moral education were consistent with the goals set for instructional

practices. Moreover, observational data indicate that these effects were accomplished without

any loss of student discipline or increase in student disruptive conduct. On the contrary, the

evidence suggests that the approach we have advocated for moral education was embraced

by the students, and had salutatory effects on classroom climate and moral growth.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter I began by criticizing traditional moral education in Japan. As an altern-

ative, I introduced the use of moral dilemma discussion (Kohlberg, 1969), altered for the

Japanese context. The approach was extended to two-hour classes with middle school

and high school students focused upon a single theme. The work has produced exten-

sive curriculum materials and guidelines for use of dilemma discussion in Japan. Exten-

sive evaluation of the outcomes used standardized assessments of moral judgment and

role-taking and applied observational methods. These evaluations demonstrate that the

dilemma approach to moral education bears signiﬁcant results. For example, while no

changes in moral development were observed in control classrooms employing tradi-

tional moral education, consistent and sustained moral growth in the moral dilemma

classes was observed. Furthermore, pupils seemed to participate in moral dilemma

classes more actively and enthusiastically compared with traditional classes.

The use of moral dilemma classes has been accepted, particularly among young teach-

ers, and has become more widely implemented in Japan. In fact, the materials for moral

dilemma classes were recently found to be used to the same extent as the standard mater-

ials for traditional moral education developed and published by the Ministry of Educa-

tion (23.6% cf. 32.0%; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology,

2013). Other evidence demonstrating a high interest in the adoption of moral dilemma

classes is the number of reprints of related books. We have published more than 10 books

on the topic, and all of these have been reprinted (and one of these has actually been

reprinted 28 times). This recent success has overcome earlier criticisms of moral dilemma

classes such as 1) they inhibit a child’s emotional growth and make students intellectu-

ally biased, 2) consideration of alternative judgments restricts student thinking, and 3) it

does not make students feel that they must engage in moral education classes, and so on.

However, we have demonstrated that each of these criticisms was unfounded.

In looking ahead I would like to point to the importance of embedding the moral

dilemma class within a school environment that aims at moral development with demo-

cracy as its backdrop (see Oser, this volume). This will take additional time to achieve

within Japan. However, my colleagues and I are committed to this effort to extend our

approach to infuse the whole school with an educational climate with justice and con-

sideration toward the just community just as Kohlberg tried.

REFERENCES

Aragaki, C. (1990). Practice and effects of moral education based on Kohlberg’s Theory. Unpublished Master’s

thesis, Hyogo University of Teacher Education, Hyogo, Japan. (Written in Japanese.)

Araki, N. (1984). On the development of “moral dilemma” teaching materials for moral discussions. Studies on

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326

MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION IN KOREA

In Jae Lee

INTRODUCTION

Throughout history across the world, moral development and character formation have

been considered to be among the most important goals of school-based education (Lee,

2002; Lickona, 1991; Molnar, 1997; Nucci, 1989; Park & Chu, 1996; Ryan & Bohlin, 1999;

The Korean Association of Education, 1997). Although the structure, content, and educa-

tional practices of moral and character education approaches differ across countries as a

function of their respective traditional, religious, societal, and cultural backgrounds they

share similar educational aims to help students grow into well-established and function-

ing members of society. This chapter will take up these issues as they play out within

moral and character education in Korea.

Moral and character education for youth varies in structure based on who is being

taught (the students), where they are being taught (the setting), and in what form instruc-

tion occurs (differing curriculums, such as speciﬁc programs or following an example in

everyday settings). Within Korea, moral and character education is closely related to one

another, with “moral subject education” and “character education” comprising two com-

plementary components within the educational system as a whole. However, the more

common and typical form is the curriculum-based moral education—“moral education

as a curriculum.”

Let us begin with a look at the key terms used in Korean moral education, their deﬁ-

nitions, and their relation to one another. First is “moral education” and “moral educa-

tion as a curriculum”—hereafter mentioned as MEC. The ultimate goals of these two

forms of education do not differ, but the time periods, objects, and the settings in which

each form of education occurs are different. “Moral education” is a broader concept

that encompasses the formal and informal learning of morals in common settings such

as home, schools, and society. MEC is an ofﬁcial and systematic interaction between

the teacher and student that takes place in a classroom setting that helps students learn

Moral and Character Education in Korea s 327

knowledge, values, behaviors, and other skills needed to understand and habituate the

expected moral lifestyle of a functioning adult in Korean society. The Moral Education

Curriculum presents general guidance for how to teach the characteristics, goals, and

content of moral education as a nation-wide standardized subject in Korean elementary

and middle schools.

A second key distinction is the differentiation between MEC and character education

(hereafter referred to as CE). These two terms are similar with respect to general goals,

but each approach reaches its goals with different methods and emphasizes different

aspects of the topic. Historically, MEC was the central point of moral education follow-

ing the ﬁrst introduction of moral education in all levels of schooling in South Korea

in 1973. However, over time increasing attitudes of rudeness, self-centeredness, phys-

ical violence, and bullying accompanied the competition of students trying to get into

higher-ranking schools. As a result of these broader effects of the educational environ-

ment, MEC was criticized as a knowledge-based curriculum that students “know of but

do not put into practice.” As a consequence, CE was promoted as an effective plan to

overcome this problem.

The issues thought to be addressed by CE are larger than those of MEC. Good char-

acter, which is the goal of CE, is demonstrated in people’s lifestyles as a whole and is

inﬂuenced by their school, home, and society. In Korea, there are two types of academic

activities—curriculum-based activities and extracurricular activities, with CE belonging

to the latter type (Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, 2011). In Korea, on

May 31st, 1995, the concept of CE was made public via a written report, “The Agenda of

Education Reform for the Establishment of a New Educational System.” It was produced

by an Ad hoc Committee of Education Reform and basically states that education needs

to change in such a way that it positively enhances the development of sound moral

character and creativeness in students. To this end, “Practical CE” needs to be strength-

ened throughout all educational activities in the school. This became the case that would

“reinforce practical character education” through extracurricular activities such as dis-

cussion (debates), experiences, and community service in 1995 (K. C. Heo, Jo, Kim, Yu,

& Lee, 1994; S. H. Heo, 1998; Kang et al., 2008; Lee, 2002).

However, CE has expanded to become more curriculum-based in recent years, and

has been integrated with MEC. This is because, despite the attention that was directed

toward CE, the effects of CE have not been evident. The assumption is that this inef-

fectiveness was because CE has not been integrated within curriculum-based activities

that take up the majority of school hours. In March 2012, the national curriculum was

reformed under “Project based character education”—a plan that was created in response

to the signiﬁcant amount of violence among students. Each school level came up with

goals that reﬂect core values, and students were encouraged to initiate, explore, experi-

ence, and put these values into practice. Referring to this event, it was declared that MEC

is to become the “central curriculum for character education,” and it was said that “Con-

sidering the role and mission that schools hold in CE today, MEC is to become its core,

supervising curriculum” (2012 Revised National Curriculum, Notiﬁcation No. 2012–14,

Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology). This led to an increased emphasis on

the signiﬁcance of MEC in the school curriculum.

Whereas MEC typically focuses on teaching students to understand moral values

and develop a sense of moral judgment, and, in addition, encourage them to put these

teachings into practice as its main goal within the classroom setting, CE encourages a

328 s I.J. Lee

comprehensive approach to improving character and virtue through curriculum-based

activities (including MEC), creative extracurricular or experiential activities, and optim-

istic climate building through the modeling of good deeds within the student body.

Therefore, the knowledge about moral values taught in MEC can be put into practice

more easily through extracurricular activities or experiential activities in the bigger

subject ﬁeld of CE.

The remainder of this paper focuses upon the speciﬁc systems and the practices of

moral education as a curriculum and its relation to character education. Together these

components comprise the approach to moral education in Korea.

MORAL EDUCATION AS A CURRICULUM: SYSTEM AND

CHARACTERISTICS

Korea’s idea of national curriculum is a general and common standard that serves as

the foundation of educational policy for elementary and middle schools. The national

curriculum helps to standardize how goals are to be achieved and with what content,

methods, and evaluations (2009 Revised National Curriculum, Notiﬁcation No. 2009–41,

Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology). There have been 10 reforms of educa-

tion policies at a national level since the emancipation of Korea in 1945. Of most sig-

niﬁcance to this topic of discussion was the third national curriculum reform that took

place in 1973. This third reform was the one that introduced and established “Morals”

as a normal subject within the school system. Since then, whenever the national curric-

ulum has been revised, moral education as a curriculum has altered focusing on MEC’s

substantiality, students’ character building, and society’s demands. Korea’s current moral

education curriculum was codiﬁed according to the national curriculum policy which

was introduced in 2009 and revised in August 2011. It was based on “the curriculum for

fulﬁllment of Project Based Character Education” that emphasized the role of character

education to ﬁt society’s demands for school violence prevention. According to this cur-

riculum, several subjects related to students’ character formation must teach students

through various projects that would help students put into practice what they learn in

the classroom.

In much of Korea’s history, the idea that “education means moral education” has con-

tinued, emphasizing the idea that character cultivation is needed for a humanistic life. In

the Joseon Dynasty, due to the heavy inﬂuence of Confucianism, the only education that

was taught was moral education. This culture carries on into today’s policies where there

is an academic subject set apart for morals studies. It is true that throughout the years

there have been pros and cons to MEC and its results, but setting MEC apart as a subject

proper reﬂects the cultural and educational background of Korea and accommodates

society’s current situation well (Jo, 2000).

Moral education as a curriculum refers to a normal subject, in other words, an inde-

pendent subject for moral education in elementary, middle, and high school levels of

education in which students and teachers interact to promote character building. As

seen in Table 19.1 below, ﬁrst to second graders learn “Proper Lifestyle” and third to

ninth graders learn “Morals,” with tenth to twelfth graders learning “Lifestyle Ethics”

and “Ethics and Thoughts.” All students in elementary and middle school are required to

take “Proper Lifestyle” and “Morals” while “Lifestyle Ethics” and “Ethics and Thoughts”

in high school are optional courses.

Moral and Character Education in Korea s 329

Concisely speaking, elementary and middle school MEC is taught from textbooks.

The textbooks present not only the systematic accumulation of information regarding

concepts of morality recognized in everyday behavior but also the ideal moral citizen

that we pursue today. The primary objective in MEC is to learn moral concepts and to

practice them—in other words, use ethical concepts to understand different behaviors

from a moralistic aspect (Lim, Yu, & Lee, 1998).

The following are characteristics of the courses that students study in MEC, starting

from elementary school until high school.

s &IRSTh0ROPER ,IFESTYLEv IS AN INTEGRATED COURSE FOR lRST AND SECOND GRADERSA

course for the lower grades in elementary school. This main focus of this course is

to teach students standard learning habits and lifestyle customs, such as basic

societal norms and recognizing expected roles in society, along with fundamental

moral concerns such as honesty, keeping promises, and treating others with

kindness. Finally this course engages students in the initial phases of the

development of self-awareness as a social and moral being.

s 3ECOND-%#FORTHIRDTONINTHGRADERSEXPANDSSTUDENTSMORALCONCERNSFORFAIR-

ness and human welfare as well as norms of etiquette and understandings of roles

and responsibilities of interpersonal relationships. Students at this level extend

their moral and social orientations to include the broader society, nature, and the

supernatural. Students are taught to develop their personal standard of morality,

be aware of diverse moral issues, and to develop knowledge about dealing with or

judging situations, putting into practice these skills in distinguishing moral issues,

helping them to become better citizens in Korean society as well as to enact pro-

gress of the world (2012 Revised National Curriculum, Notiﬁcation No. 2012–14,

Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology).

s 4HIRD-%#FORTENTHTOTWELFTHGRADERSh,IFESTYLE%THICSvFOCUSESONDEVELOPING

skills, attitudes, and ethical awareness including dealing with current ethical prob-

lems in a righteous and reasonable way by re-examining Korean ancestors’ ethical

lives from a current point of view and understanding the characteristics of ethical

problems in various aspects of contemporary life.

s &OURTH -%# FOR TENTH TO TWELFTH GRADERSh%THICS AND 4HOUGHTSv TEACHESSTUDENTS

about the system of morals in not only Korea, but in both the Eastern and Western

worlds. By studying morals from different parts of the world and their various soci-

eties, students can develop an autonomous deﬁnition of morality and develop the

skills necessary to properly deal with and overcome ethical problems in current times.

Table 19.1 Course Listing for Elementary, Middle, and High Schools

School Level Elementary School Middle School High School

Grade Level 1st & 2nd grade 3rd–6th grade 7th–9th grade 10th–12th grade

Curriculum Proper Lifestyle Morals Morals

Subject Proper Lifestyle Morals Lifestyle Ethics

Ethics and Thoughts

Features Mandatory for all students that fall under the National Common

Basic Curriculum

Optional

330 s I.J. Lee

Korea’s youth learn basic lifestyle habits and basic learning habits in ﬁrst and second

grade through the “Proper Lifestyle” course. Students deepen their knowledge and

understanding of the content in third grade to ninth grade through “Morals” and set

up the foundation to learn more extensively in high school through “Ethics and

Thoughts” as well as “Lifestyle Ethics.” “Morals” taught to third through sixth graders

places its main focus on having students internalize typical lifestyle norms, understand

values and virtues, foster a sense of moral judgment, and form a routine of practicing

this knowledge in real life. On the other hand, “Morals” taught to seventh through

ninth graders puts an emphasis on deepening the knowledge that was learned in the

previous half of the course, challenging students to think more extensively about

values and virtues, assess situations according to moral principles, and come to an

autonomous sense of morality. “Morals” in elementary school focuses on habituation

of basic lifestyle and etiquette, while “Morals” in middle school focuses on the

advanced understanding of virtues and the engagement of moral judgment based on

moral principle.

MORAL EDUCATION AS A CURRICULUM: GOALS AND CONTENT

The goals of moral education as a curriculum have two important aspects: One is that

it clearly illuminates an educational direction in fostering students to become a “good

citizen” through the moral education curriculum. The other is that it provides a standard

that sets up the subject’s content selection and organization, teaching methods, evalu-

ations, and a variety of other educational activities. These goals of this MEC are set to

reﬂect the characteristics of MEC for nourishing the four desired character traits that the

national curriculum pursues.

In the current Korean education system, four desired character traits are presented

in order to foster “the creative and talented people” that Korea’s future society needs—a

self-directed person, a creative person, a cultivated person, and a global-minded person.

The following describes each of the four types (2009 Revised National Curriculum, Noti-

ﬁcation No. 2009–41, Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology):

1. Self-Directed Person: Intelligence, internal character, and physical health are

well-developed all around. He/she pioneers his/her individualistic path of

development.

2. Creative Person: Comes up with innovative ideas and creative challenges to

build upon the basic foundation of knowledge he/she already possesses.

3. Cultivated Person: Leads a digniﬁed life grounded in the acknowledgment and

appreciation of cultural qualities and pluralistic values.

4. Global-Minded Person: Exercises caring and sharing in order to take part in a

common development for all as one who recognizes himself/herself as a part of

a bigger world.

The goal of MEC is to cultivate a good character or moral development of students in

order to achieve these four desired character traits that the national curriculum pursues.

In other words, its goal is to harmoniously develop moral knowledge, moral emotions,

and moral behaviors together. The main focus of moral education is to foster different

levels of moral development, with the formation of basic lifestyle norms in the lower

Moral and Character Education in Korea s 331

levels and the cultivation of autonomic characters with increasing ability to think and

judge situations appropriately.

A. Elementary school: The objectives of Proper Lifestyle

Developing necessary lifestyle habits that our households, schools, and com-

munities require of us. Forming habits to learn properly from households and

schools. Learning basic skills by putting the learned material into practice.

B. Elementary and middle school: The objectives of Morals

Learning how to respectfully maintain relationships with self, others, society,

nation, world, nature, and the supernatural. Increasing awareness of various

morality-related problems that arise in different aspects of life by developing

cognitive skills, emotions, virtues, and putting them into practice in order to

progress into a more autonomous being.

C. High school: The objectives of Lifestyle Ethics

Learning how to explore and reﬂect the various ethical problems that arise in

current times in light of understanding, judgment, and decision-making skills

cultivated from studying ethics. Building character to produce functioning

members of society.

D. High school: The objectives of Ethics and Thoughts

Acquiring thoughts from the East (including Korea) and the West to come to

better understandings, reﬂections, and effective responses to various ethical

problems present in different aspects of life today.

At the center of EMC content are core values and virtues. The concept of core values

and virtues is a combination of the traditional values that underlie Korean history and

the expectations that the current society puts on its citizens to be a sound and partici-

pating member. The content of MEC has been reformed time and time again under the

inﬂuences of moral education theorists’ research ﬁndings as well as the opinions of

teachers and parents alike (Cha & Yun, 2002; Yun, Chu, & Jeong, 2009).

In moral curriculum, we apply “the principle of Expansion of Value Relationships”

as a criterion to select and organize the contents to be taught. And taking into account

the level of moral development and the range of moral experiences of the students, we

integrated the virtue-centered contents and the moral issue-centered (theme) contents.

Human beings live within a moral community which is ﬁlled with questions that chal-

lenge what “ought to be” the norm according to moral sense. In such a moral space, we

reﬂect on our own and the world’s ways of dealing with morals. The reﬂection means

that “I” as a subject of reﬂection direct the object of thought and am aware of it. At this

time the relationship between the moral subject and thinking object is deﬁned by the

“moral values” and the moral subject and thinking object are built through the value

relationship interconnecting through moral values.

There are four types of central value relationships in a person’s life—the relationship

to the self as moral subject; the relationship between self and we/others; the relationship

between self and society, nation, and the global world; and the relationship between self

and natural and supernatural beings. The Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships

refers to the idea that as one progresses through the level of value relationships, the

area that contains the subject to be reﬂected grows larger in size. As Figure 19.1 below

shows, as direction (A) moves along the different levels of relationships, the relative area

332 • I.J. Lee

of the reﬂected subject increases. In the same way, as you move down direction (B), the

inﬂuence the relationship has on the individual increases as well. Therefore, it is not

only important to put signiﬁcance on knowing about the differences in relative area for

various levels of relationships, but it is also important to consider which moral values are

placed in each of the relationships.

Following the Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships, the core values and

virtues that must be taught from the third grade to the ninth grade through MEC have

been separated into two types. You can see them in Table 19.2. Holistic-domain ori-

entation values and virtues (respect, responsibility, justice, caring) must be taught in

all domains without domain distinction. But domain-speciﬁc orientation values and

virtues must be taught with three to four values and virtues in each domain.

On one hand, the contents of “Lifestyle Ethics” and “Ethics and Thoughts” in high

school curricula are as described in Table 19.3 and Table 19.4. Unlike elementary and

middle school, these contents were organized focusing on moral issues (themes), which

all students should understand, explore, and practice in their everyday lives.

Moral and charactEr EducatIon MEthods and charactEr

EducatIon ProGraM BasEd on ExPErIEncEs

No one can deny that it is good to foster respectable character in students. As an

integrated character education emphasizes, one who has good character is a person

who possesses the moral virtues as integrated aspects of the self, and acts on the basis

We and

others

Society,

nation,

and the

global

world

Nature and

the super-

natural

being

The

self

Figure 19.1 The Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships.

Table 19.2 Elementary and Middle School MEC System and Contents According to the Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships

Domain Core Values and Virtues Main Topics

Holistic-Domain

Orientation

Domain-Speciﬁc Orientation

The self as a moral subject

s 4HEEGOISESTABLISHEDTHROUGHSUBJECTIVELYBASED

moral values

Respect,

Responsibility,

Justice,

Caring

Autonomy, Sincerity,

Self-control

s (UMANANDMORALS

s 4HEOBJECTIVEOFLIFEANDMORALS

s !UTONOMOUSMORALITY

s -ORALEXPLORATIONANDREmECTION

The relationship between self we/others

s 6ALUESANDVIRTUESOFINTERPERSONALRELATIONSHIPS

Filial piety, Etiquette, Cooperation s &AMILYETHICS

s -ANNERISMSWITHINNEIGHBORINGRELATIONS

s -ORALSINSCHOOLLIFE

s 9OUTHANDMORALS

The relationship between self and society, nation, and

the global world

s 2ESPONSIBILITIESDUTIESSOCIALJUSTICEOFACITIZENTOITS

society, nation, global world

Compliance, Public interest, Nationalism,

Will of reuniﬁcation, Humanity

s 3OCIALJUSTICEANDSOCIALETHICS

s .ATIONALETHICS

s 5NIlCATIONANDETHICS

s 'LOBALETHICS

The relationship between self and natural and

supernatural beings

s %NHANCEMENTOFVALUESPLACEDONNATUREANDTHE

supernatural

Love for nature, Respect for life, Peace s %NVIRONMENTALETHICS

s 3CIENTIlCETHICS

s #ULTURALETHICS

s 2ELIGIONETHICS

Table 19.3 Contents of High School Curricula: Lifestyle Ethics

Domain Topic The Related Applied Ethics

Modern Life Application Ethics s .ECESSITYOFAPPLICABLEMODERNLIFEETHICS

s %XPLORATIONANDPRACTICEOFETHICALPROBLEMS

s 6ARYINGMETHODSTORESOLVEETHICALPROBLEMS

Application Ethics

Life and Sex and Family Ethics s ,IFEANDDEATHETHICS

s ,IFESCIENCEETHICS

Life Ethics

s 3EXANDLOVEETHICS Sex Ethics

s &AMILYRELATIONSHIPSETHICS

s &RIENDANDACQUAINTANCERELATIONSHIPSETHICS

Family

Scientiﬁc Technology, Environmental, and Information Ethics s 3CIENCEANDTECHNOLOGYETHICS Scientiﬁc Technology Ethics

s (UMANANDNATURESRELATIONSHIP

s %THICALCONCERNREGARDINGENVIRONMENTALISSUES

Environmental Ethics

s )NFORMATIONAGEANDETHICS Information Ethics

Societal Ethics and Work Ethics s 3OCIETALMORALNORMSANDETHICS

s 3OCIALJUSTICEANDAJUSTSOCIETY

s (UMANRIGHTSANDANEQUALSOCIETY

Societal Ethics

s 3IGNIlCANCEOFWORKANDITSETHICALRESPONSIBILITIES Work Ethics

Culture Ethics s !ESTHETICVALUESANDETHICALVALUES Art Ethics

s 2ELIGIOUSETHICS Religious Ethics

s &OODCLOTHINGANDSHELTERETHICS Basic Needs Ethics

s -ULTICULTURALETHICS Multi-cultural Ethics

Peace Ethics s .ATIONAL)NTEGRATIONAND%THICAL)SSUES Nation Ethics

s 'LOBAL%THICAL3ITUATIONAND)SSUES Global Ethics

Table 19.4 Contents of High School Curricula: Ethics and Thoughts

Domain Topics Remarks

Signiﬁcance of Ethical Thoughts and Societal

Thoughts

s ,IFEANDETHICALTHOUGHTS

s )DEALSOCIETYSFULlLLMENTANDSOCIETALTHOUGHT

s %XPLORATIONOFETHICALTHOUGHTSANDSOCIETALTHOUGHTS

Life, ethical, and societal thoughts

Asian and Korean Ethical Thoughts s !SIANAND+OREANETHICALTHOUGHTSCHARACTERISTICSANDmOW Asian and Korean ethics’ ﬂow

s #ONFUCIANISTTHOUGHTSORIGINANDDEVELOPMENT

s #HARACTERISTICSOF#ONFUCIANISTETHICALTHOUGHT

s +OREAN#ONFUCIANISMSCHARACTERISTICSANDSIGNIlCANCE

Confucianist ethical thoughts

s "UDDHISTTHOUGHTSORIGINANDDEVELOPMENT

s #HARACTERISTICSOF"UDDHISTETHICALTHOUGHT

s +OREAN"UDDHISMSCHARACTERISTICSANDSIGNIlCANCE

Buddhist ethical thoughts

s 4AOISTTHOUGHTSORIGINANDDEVELOPMENT

s #HARACTERISTICSOF4AOISTETHICALTHOUGHT

s +OREAN4AOISMSCHARACTERISTICSANDSIGNIlCANCE

Taoist ethical thoughts

s +OREASUNIQUEORIGINCHARACTERISTICSANDSIGNIlCANCE Korea’s unique ethical thoughts

Western Ethical Thoughts s 7ESTERNETHICALTHOUGHTSCHARACTERISTICSANDmOW Western ethical thought ﬂow

s 2ELATIVISMANDABSOLUTISM

s )DEALISMANDREALISM

s (EDONISMANDASCETICISM

Happiness ethics

s #HRISTIANETHICS Faith and ethics

s %MPIRICISTANDRATIONALISM

s #ONSEQUENTIALISTETHICSAND5TILITARIANISM

s $EONTOLOGICALETHICSAND+ANTIANTHOUGHT

Obligation ethics

s 0RAGMATICETHICSANDEXISTENTIALISM Modern ethical thoughts

Societal Thoughts s 4HEINDIVIDUALANDAUTONOMY

s #OMMUNITYANDSOLIDARITY

s .ATIONANDETHICS

Individual, common, and national ethics

s $EMOCRATIC3OCIETYSETHICS

s 3OCIALJUSTICE

Democracy and justice

s #APITALISTSOCIETYSETHICS

s 3OCIALISTSOCIETYSETHICALIMPLICATIONS

Capitalism and socialism

336 • I.J. Lee

of them rather than merely possessing an awareness of the virtues as abstract qual-

ities. A person of good character is someone who attends to the moral implications

of actions and acts in accordance with what is moral in all but the most extreme of

circumstance (Nucci, 2000). In other words, we can say a person of good character is a

“morally mature person” with equal development in moral judgment, moral emotion,

and moral behavior. It means that a “morally mature person” is able to understand and

judge what is the right thing or value and signiﬁes this understanding with enthusi-

asm by putting moral principles into practice (Lee, 2001). In conclusion, the concept

of a “morally mature person” is in accordance with Lickona’s (1991) concept of “a

good character.” According to Lickona, character is composed of active value, and it

is constituted by values that can be seen through one’s behavior. If a value becomes

a virtue—a reliable inner inclination that acts to the situation in a moral way—then

his character is developed. And a good character is constructed of moral knowing,

moral feeling, and moral behavior all co-related with one another. These three things

are really necessary means to lead a moral life, and eventually it allows a person to be

mature (Lickona, 1991; Lee, Park, Sim, & Jo, 2000).

In concert with the deﬁnition of character presented above, Lickona (1991) emphas-

izes the need for a comprehensive, intentional, and proactive approach to character

education. In Korea, the approach to CE has likewise been intentionally directed toward

impacting the following three elements: moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behav-

ior in harmony. Efforts at CE have been directed toward precise sequencing and planning

of the curriculum and activities that are sustained over time. The approach has been to

grasp natural tendencies of students with respect to CE, conﬁrm the organic cooperation

of these tendencies through educational practices, to encourage students to practice it

continuously, and to reinforce activity with feedback and adequate evaluation. In order

to get maximum efﬁciency out of moral and character education, the moral education

curriculum needs to combine different aspects of traditional and modern Eastern and

Western methods that have been effective in the past. The goal is to extract from these

diverse methods ways to impact students’ growth in three components that make up

morality—moral knowledge, moral emotion, and moral behavior.

In order to accomplish this in the overall time period spent in schools, and to continue

the process of “living” character beyond the classroom, each of the different elements

of school, family, and community are envisioned as components within an integrated

approach. Korean moral and character education’s integrated approach is as shown in

Figure 19.2.

Figure 19.2 presents components of a comprehensive moral and character education

framework. This broader conceptual frame reﬂects our recognition that fully impacting

moral development and character formation goes beyond the conﬁnes of classrooms

and schools (Lee, 2000, 2001). Having said that let us turn now to a focused discussion of

the components of moral and character education as they are carried out within school

setting. In elementary, middle, and high schools, teachers basically utilize the teaching

and learning methods of moral and character education presented by the national moral

curriculum in order to achieve the goal of moral and character education (2012 Revised

National Curriculum, Notiﬁcation No. 2012–14, Ministry of Education, Science, and

Technology). In each school level, however, teachers choose and apply adequately various

teaching and learning methods while considering the goals and contents of the moral

Moral climate of classroom and school

Character

building

ParentsCommunity

Curriculum

activities

Extracurricular

activities

Teachers

Students

Moral subjects

Other subjects

Figure 19.2 An Integrated Approach of Moral and Character Education.

education curriculum and the levels and characteristics of students’ cognitive and moral

development.

The most commonly used methods for MEC and CE within the Korean school system

can be separated into the following types:

1. Following the example of role-models of respectable character

Students possess a developmental characteristic that makes them want to be

more like the moral exemplars they witness in their lives. One of Korea’s oldest

methods of moral and character education is encouraging students to follow

morally-righteous behavior of people in their daily lives—their parents, teach-

ers, friends, neighbors, or notable historical ﬁgures or characters from literature

(Do, 2011; Park & Chu, 1996). This method typically involves two approaches

(Lee, 1998, 1999, 2000).

First, teachers can carry out deeds that inspire students to follow in his/her

footsteps. When students recognize that teachers actually live according to the

moral values and norms they teach, they will voluntarily take their teachers’

lifestyles and deeds as a model to follow. Koreans strongly believe that a teach-

er’s esteemed character is a learning environment and educational value in

Moral and Character Education in Korea • 337

338 • I.J. Lee

itself, and consider it to be one of the most effective methods of moral and

character education. Therefore teachers, knowing they are objects of identiﬁca-

tion for students, demonstrate honesty, kindness, fairness, consideration,

responsibility, adherence to laws and regulations, justice, love, and other qual-

ities in their daily lifestyle so that students may follow properly.

Second, teachers can present various literature or moral stories that have

characters with admirable traits, inspiring the students to be moved by the

heroes’ deeds and follow in the characters’ footsteps. Moral stories demonstrate

morally valuable and virtuous characteristics including how a person should

act when facing adversity or moral conﬂict. In order to help students reﬂect on

morality in their own lives, teachers suggest that students make up and explore

within their own moral stories. Teachers construct moral stories to use during

moral education (Lee, 1999) by collecting a variety of hypothetical and/or real

moral stories that exemplify an upright and proper life. These moral stories can

usually be found in literature, history, myths, traditional tales, ﬁlms, soap

operas, or newspapers. Teachers then reconﬁgure the moral stories based on the

class’s goal and content, the students’ level of morality, the appropriate time to

teach the material (timings for the introduction, development, and conclu-

sion), functionality (understanding moral values and the concept of norms,

practicing in making moral decisions to resolve conﬂicts, developing empathy,

forming a commitment to morality, and habituation), and the method of pre-

senting the material (reading the text content, audio recordings, forms of mul-

timedia, cartoons, and role-playing). Other than the aforementioned, teachers

prevent students from falling into an improper way of life by providing a list of

accredited books and encouraging students to identify the characters’ good

deeds and maxims, and wise sayings of famous individuals, and to unravel the

meaning, recite, or write a book report about the suggested readings.

2. Concept exploration and explanation of moral values and norms

Teachers use concept learning and explanations of moral knowledge in order to

help students clearly understand moral values and norms. This method is

effective in teaching students moral values, virtues, social norms, and under-

standing and recognition of what a suitable member of society is and the

importance of such things (Yu, 2010). When using this method, teachers

encourage students to lead an exploration of moral knowledge in consideration

of the students’ experiences, their morality’s breadth and depth, and their level

of concept comprehension. In this way, the teacher is able to provide hypothet-

ical moral situations in which there are conﬂicting sides of good and evil, right

and wrong, and justice and injustice. As students identify moral values and/or

norms within these situations through individual or group learning processes,

they can explore the signiﬁcance and meaning behind the values and norms. In

order for students to understand the importance of the values and norms, stu-

dents learn a victim-oriented approach of thinking to help realize how the

consequences of not following the standards of morals would affect the stu-

dents themselves as well as their surroundings.

3. Discussion or debate through moral dilemmas

Teachers use discussion or debate to help students develop upright moral

thought, judgment, and decision-making ability around speciﬁc moral problems

Moral and Character Education in Korea • 339

that students face. This discussion-based learning is one method of moral

teaching and learning with proven effectiveness through many experiences

(Oser, Althof, & Higgins-d’Alessandro, 2008). As real or hypothetical moral

dilemmas are presented to students, individuals have a chance to imagine

themselves as protagonist of the story and take a viewpoint from which they

can discuss what they believe and why, so that the students can inclusively come

to a conclusion about the best scenario possible. Teachers provide scenarios

that are similar to real-life so that students are interested and more willing to

participate in these activities. In doing this, teachers can use discussion as a tool

for students to learn how to distinguish what is right and expected in a situ-

ation, as well as learning the highest moral principles and investigating,

judging, and determining the consequences of immoral actions in such scen-

arios (Frankel, 1977; J. S. Kim, 2006; Yu, 2010).

4. Peer exchange of moral experiences through narratives

Narratives present everyone with a number of decisions around moral dilem-

mas and give the speaker a chance to reﬂect on past decisions as they recite

before an audience. Narratives are student-centered individual experiences that

allow students to become the author of their own life story and give meaning

to their moral experiences. In the process, students form and improve their

moral authority (H. I. Kim, 2001; Lee, 1999; Tappan & Brown, 1989). Teachers

provide an opportunity for students to share their experiences amongst their

peers. In story-telling about personal moral experiences, comparing these to

others’ stories, and reﬂecting on others’ experiences, students can heighten their

sense of responsibility about their own thinking, emotion, or actions based on

the other students’ experiences. In other words, students can become the author

of their own lives and tell how they have failed or were successful in various

moral dilemmas. Students reﬂect and see the mistakes they made, and gain a

stronger will to put their learning into practice.

The important point here is that students not only come to a conclusion but

also have an understanding of their thinking processes and justiﬁcations for

having arrived at that conclusion, including the reason why the predicted

outcome was different from the actual outcome. By doing this, they are able to

share their regrettable or victorious experiences with their peers, and motivate

and encourage his/her friends’ righteous behavior. In exchanging their moral

experiences, they are teaching one another moral values. To achieve this, teach-

ers most frequently use “story-telling” and “writing” to have the students

express their moral experiences (Lee, 1999).

5. Project-based character education

Various character education projects have been put into action in order to raise

a global twenty-ﬁrst century generation full of creativity and character. Creativ-

ity and character education is an organic combination that produces people

with the culture of creativity, the driving force of character education, and the

proper judgment founded upon sound morals (Moon, 2010; Moon, Choi,

Kwak, & Lee, 2010). The character elements that creativity and character educa-

tion aims to promote are moral values, virtues, and behavior norms. Core

virtues applicable to any school level are interpersonal virtue, honesty, keeping

one’s appointment, forgiveness, care, responsibility, and ownership. The ideal

340 • I.J. Lee

virtues of a creative talent are judgment for creative character, moral sensitivity,

moral judgment, decision-making skills, and moral behaviors.

In March of 2012, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology saw a

dire need for a project-based CE that could put knowledge into practice. They

started to teach elements of core character competency, such as empathy, com-

munication skills, problem-solving skills, and justice in all school levels in liter-

ature, moral education as curriculum, and social studies classes. They reformed

the curriculum emphasizes putting these values into practice instead of just

accumulating knowledge. The project-based character education is activity-

and experience-centered practical character education that moves away from

knowledge-based character education. The educational activities foster right-

eous character and the ability to resolve conﬂicts that may occur in school set-

tings through various project activities that require the students to resolve on

their own through individual or teamwork. In the case of MEC, teachers

addressed issues of bullying, dilemmas between friends, youth violence, and the

responsibilities and obligations of students through a project approach in

which students had a chance to explore and reﬂect back on the issues.

Instructions for project-based character education for teachers can be sepa-

rated into four steps as follows. First, as a preparatory step, the students make a

plan and prepare what they need according to the requirements of the project.

Second, as the starting phase of the project, the students set themes and create

a speciﬁc list of questions to be explored in the project. Third, as a procedure to

put the project into practice, the students prepare to go on-site after coming up

with the list of questions, and visit the site to obtain the desired information

and solve the inquired tasks. Also, through interviews with experts in that par-

ticular ﬁeld of study, the students explore a more detailed depth regarding the

given tasks. Fourth, as the ﬁnal step of the project, students organize the

obtained results after having participated in the project and express their

impressions they took away from the experience. And ﬁnally the students

render the experience and knowledge gained through the activities of the

project as their own. At that point, the teacher has students reﬂect by asking

themselves, “How will I live,” “What will I live for,” “Who am I,” and “What is

violence and why is it a problem.” The MEC teacher’s main focus is on guiding,

advising, and assisting students.

6. Creating a moral and caring school community

Teachers try their best to create a positive and moral climate within a classroom

and school. To make a school function well as a democratic and moral com-

munity, the school’s institution, structure, classroom mood, and scholastic

activities must be thriving morally. If this is accomplished, students are able to

experience the acceptance of moral values while in school and therefore habitu-

ate themselves into a culture of good morals during all the hours they spend at

school. To do this, teachers must facilitate different methods and activities to

promote an atmosphere in which students respect each other, participate in

student governments, uplift one another through conversations, become a

Secret Santa (anonymous gifting) for a friend in need, establish and abide by

school rules, and participate in a culture of encouragement (Lee, 2001).

7. Experiencing and practicing moral values ﬁrst-hand

Moral and Character Education in Korea • 341

Teachers put into practice the core values and virtues learned in school through

MEC through ﬁrst-hand experiences to help students internalize and habituate

these values in the following ways:

First, students take part in volunteer services in nursing homes or orphan-

ages in order to foster a sense of caring for the others and social responsibility

towards their community. Second, by using the school’s classroom for manners,

students actually experience various manners and etiquettes such as tea eti-

quette, the proper way to wear clothes, greeting properly, and making courte-

ous phone calls. Third, while participating in cleanup activities early in the

morning with friends and teachers in the classroom and around the school and

sharing conversations with them, students raise a sense of industry, cooperation

and a sense of service. Fourth, through activities such as raising plants and

animals at school and home, students cultivate a bright mind and a sense of

respect for life. Fifth, by writing a letter of thanks to their parents and siblings,

students feel gratitude and grow a heart of love between family members. Sixth,

while praising a friend’s strength and talents (relaying compliments) and

exchanging encouraging letters of friendship (setting up and running a mailbox

of friendship), students uplift a mind to respect and cherish their friends.

Seventh, by getting an opportunity to play a role of team leader in the class-

room, students take a part in school life rewardingly and learn how to be a

responsible leader. Eighth, by operating a school-run mock court, they develop

a sense of autonomy and social responsibility. Ninth, using a self-checking

accountability system such as “the righteous life practice card,” students are

able to reﬂect back on their deeds and make a habit of moral behavior.

8. School-home-community partnership

Youth grow in multiple environments—school, home, and community—so it

is vital that households and communities utilize each other efﬁciently as part-

ners in moral education. In order to do this, both establishments must

cooperate purposefully. First, teachers encourage parents to help with CE in

their children’s lives by participating in two ways: by becoming a “helper” in

their lives, or by becoming a resourceful person within the community. Second,

households as a whole can participate in and/or create programs. The following

are some of the after-school programs that are currently implemented: creating

family newspapers (learning to appreciate family more), sharing meals together

(becoming better communicators), and going out on Saturdays as a designated

“family day.” On Saturdays, families can go out to experience traditional music,

take technology classes together, or go out on a bike ride as a household. Third,

students set up and implement a plan to collaborate with the community in

order to promote students’ character development and perform service. Teach-

ers use programs such as experiential events/camps, where students can volun-

teer for the less fortunate or other local events that promote good character.

This approach is based on the premise that students can internalize their

knowledge and put it into practice with the three environments, becoming a

“household-like school,” a “school-like household,” and a “family-like com-

munity” (Lee, 2000, 2001).

342 • I.J. Lee

conclusIon

As a result of a self-centered culture that prioritizes academic ranking and lowers the sig-

niﬁcance of moral education, problems such as lack of sympathy and sharing, incidents

of crime and youth violence, and substance abuse are prevalent in Korean society today.

Despite a dire need for successful moral education, there are many challenges in Korea

today.

First of all, although teachers and parents alike agree that there is a crucial need for

character building, they still prioritize subjects like English and Math—so students will

have a better chance at getting into top-ranking schools—and therefore limit the amount

of time moral education is taught in the classroom. Students do not show interest in the

subject so teaching the material becomes harder as students grow older in age. Second,

various temporary character-building projects put in place by the government have not

been effective, more like applying ﬁrst aid to an urgent situation without thinking about

the long-term effects. Moral education as a curriculum in the scholastic setting is viewed

as more of an external response to society’s complaints rather an intrinsic value that

should be learned and internalized for the sake of improving one’s character (Korea Insti-

tute for Curriculum and Evaluation, 2011). Third, teachers have little interest, passion,

or expertise in the subject matter. The lack of participation on the part of administrators

within schools, from both principals and vice principals, also restricts curricula growth.

Fourth, there is little cooperation among households, schools, and communities with

little shared instruction.

It is not expected that students’ character building will happen overnight. CE is a pro-

gressive concept with an objective to eventually develop men and women of admirable

character. Building character is a composite interaction that requires a linkage among

many elements. In order to achieve this, students, parents, and teachers need to practice

active participation and acknowledge the necessity of CE. In doing so, it must be known

that MEC and CE are mutually dependent curricula that encompass both curricula

and extracurricular activities in school, households, and communities and are properly

designed to run for long-term periods.

CE, which belongs to a larger category than MEC, had been reduced down to an

alternative of MEC because of the critiques of effectiveness following the continued

misconduct of youth and their violent behaviors, however, MEC is now recognized as

the core of CE. If MEC’s role or its signiﬁcance were to be ignored, the fulﬁllment of

CE’s goals would be heavily restricted. In developing admirable character, MEC’s unique

method of teaching morals and its values, norms, and recognition is necessary in order

to promote morality and habituate it into our lives.

rEfErEncEs

Cha, W. G. & Yun, H. J. (2002). A study on the goals and contents system of moral subject education (1). Seoul:

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Part IV

Moral Education in Relation to Civic Engagement,

Citizenship, and Democracy Education

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347

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Regime Type, Foundational Questions, and Classroom Practice

Walter C. Parker

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people

themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render them safe their minds

must be improved to a certain degree. This is not all that is necessary, though it be essen-

tially necessary. An amendment of our [Virginia] constitution must here come in aid of

the public education.

Thomas Jefferson, 1787

INTRODUCTION

Citizenship and citizenship education are two of the oldest ideas in political theory, and

scholars are showing new interest in both. Through every era of recorded history, these

ideas have been present, linked, and contested. Jefferson’s view, summarized here in his

plea for public education, is a distillation of centuries of Western writing on the sub-

ject—beginning with the Greeks (especially Plato and Aristotle), the Romans (Cicero),

and then the daring thinkers of the Renaissance who jettisoned theism (Machiavelli) and

of the Enlightenment who constructed reason, rights, and individuals (Locke, Rousseau).

This tradition set the precedent for what followed in the United States. When Elizabeth

Cady Stanton and her associates met at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 and ratiﬁed

the Declaration of Sentiments, or when Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the crowd at

the March on Washington more than a century later, they were mobilizing the civil rights

principles of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution to advance their

own causes. The woman suffragists famously altered the second sentence of the Declara-

tion of Independence to read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and

women are created equal . . .” (Stanton, Anthony, & Gage, 1889, p. 70). Similarly, King

demanded not an alternative to the founding principles of the United States but their

fulﬁllment. “Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy,” he said.

348 s W.C. Parker

We have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our

republic wrote the magniﬁcent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of

Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to

fall heir. . . . We have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand

the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

(King, 2001, p. 82)

The idea of citizenship is concerned with membership in a political community. Who

belongs and who does not? The stakes are high because not only is citizen an identity

but because rights and beneﬁts come with membership—access to voting and police

protection, for example. Criteria become important: Can you access these things simply

by being here for an amount of time, or must you be born here? Do you need addi-

tional qualiﬁcations—blood, language, or religion? And what about educational attain-

ment? To be a member of this political community must you be literate? Must you pass

a “citizenship test”?

We can see, then, that citizenship is a longstanding idea and still vital today. The idea

of citizenship education is old and still vital, too. In contemporary US society, it is also

called “civic education” and “political education” although the latter is often avoided

outside academe, perhaps because it connotes indoctrination. In schools, citizenship

education includes formal coursework in government—not government generally but

US government in particular and, less frequently offered or taken, comparative govern-

ment (speciﬁcally, Advanced Placement Comparative Government and Politics). Citizen-

ship education also occurs formally in US history courses. These are typically offered in

grades 5, 8, and 11. Less formally, citizenship education also occurs in student council

programs, elections to various school ofﬁces, daily recitation of the loyalty oath known

as The Pledge of Allegiance, and elsewhere.

For a proper understanding of citizenship education in any society, it is necessary to

appreciate that it is, in William Galston’s (2001) succinct phrase, “relative to regime type”

(p. 218). Democratic regimes “require democratic citizens whose speciﬁc knowledge,

competencies, and character would not be as well suited to nondemocratic politics.”

Regime is no longer a widely used term outside the academy, but it is key to understand-

ing citizenship education in any country. A country’s regime is its form of government

coupled with its political culture, including its practices and its aspirations. Patriotism,

whatever its particular meanings, is an idea related to membership in a particular regime.

In a democratic regime, the animating idea is that the people themselves are the gov-

ernors. This is popular sovereignty or the idea that “we the people” (the opening words of

the US Constitution) create governments to secure their rights, and that we consent to be

governed. This is, quoting Lincoln at Gettysburg, “government of, by, and for the people.”

Citizens need not only comply with authorities, but become authorities; not only obey

laws, but make laws; not only abide by judges’ rulings, but serve as jurors and deliberate

policy with other citizens. As Jefferson implies in this chapter’s opening quote, the people

cannot rule well if they are a band of unskillful or unthoughtful know-nothings. Their

minds “must be improved to a certain degree.” Accordingly, he tried to convince fellow

Virginians to fund public education. He failed. That innovation came in the middle of

the next century in Massachusetts, championed by Horace Mann.

Every regime has an interest in civic education, even non-democracies like con-

temporary China and Saudi Arabia or 1940 Germany. Nazi Germany had extensive civic

Citizenship Education in the United States s 349

education programs, both in school and out, tailored to the cultivation of good Nazis.

Youth were taught obedience to state authority, militarism, patriarchy, heterosexism, love

of Hitler, hatred of Jews, and racism (Rempel, 1989). Two millennia earlier, Plato had

another idea about citizenship education. Unlike the Nazis, he had a fair and just regime

in mind, but he doubted citizens’ ability to rule. It is easy today to answer afﬁrmatively

the question, should the people rule? Americans grow up in a cultural surround that

believes fervently in popular sovereignty, at least rhetorically and generally. But can the

people rule? Are they able? This is a different question, and probably every reader of

this chapter is circumspect about it. Jefferson believed education could compensate for

the people’s lack of native ability to govern. Plato famously did not. Ordinary citizens

mistake their opinions for knowledge, Plato believed, and “democracy” in practice is the

tyranny of these opinions multiplied by the number of citizens—the blind leading the

blind while conﬁdently believing they can see clearly. This is not a promising situation.

And so, in The Republic, he presented an education system where children were removed

from their mother’s care and then educated according to their abilities, with the most

able trained to be the governors of the country.

With this introduction to the central ideas of this chapter in hand (citizenship and

citizenship education), let me preview what is to come. In the next two sections, I

address the current state of scholarship on both concepts. We will see that investigations

of each have returned to prominence. Then, I turn to three foundational issues that

help to explain some unique political controversies that animate citizenship education

in the United States, “unique” because they are speciﬁc to the US regime type and its

core tension between democratic authority (e.g., a school board) and personal freedom

(e.g., religious beliefs). Following this, we will peer into citizenship-education practices

in classrooms and schools where we ﬁnd, ﬁrst and foremost, inequality in the distribu-

tion of effective pedagogies and, again unique to the US regime type, the key role of non-

governmental organizations.

SCHOLARSHIP ON CITIZENSHIP RETURNS

Citizenship and citizenship education, both ancient and much-addressed topics, have

not always been foremost on scholarly agendas. Today they are back with gusto.

Reasons

for this can be found at the juncture of globalization, migration, and the decline in civic

engagement in actually-existing democracies. Gershon Shaﬁr (1998), the editor of a

leading volume on the subject, suggests that citizenship is back because of four con-

temporary processes: the recent wave of democratization in Eastern Europe and parts of

Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; the rise of ethnic conﬂicts in the European

Union; the associated debate over welfare entitlements (an argument over the rights and

beneﬁts of citizenship); and global migration to modern industrial nations. All of these,

he notes, have been analyzed through the prism of citizenship.

Anthropologist Aiwa Ong (1999, 2003) examines the buzzing heterogeneity in these

global ﬂows. In two studies, she contrasts the afﬂuent transnational citizens of global

metropolises—“ﬂexible citizens,” she calls them, because they hold multiple passports

and properties in, say, Hong Kong and San Francisco—with poor and often desperate

migrants seeking low-end work in nearby countries (Indians in Persian Gulf states, Mex-

icans in the United States), and their ensuing struggles for access to rights and beneﬁts.

On the same platform, geographer Katharyne Mitchell (2001) examined the education

350 s W.C. Parker

conﬂicts that resulted when afﬂuent Chinese, who had migrated from Hong Kong and

Taiwan to neighborhoods in and around Vancouver, clashed with their similarly afﬂu-

ent but ethnically different Anglo-Canadian neighbors over curriculum policies in the

school district. Deweyan democracy and child-centered pedagogy met Confucian mer-

itocracy and ﬁlial piety. The formation of the “good Canadian citizen” was opened to

debate.

Also inviting the new scholarship on citizenship is the decline in traditional forms

of civic engagement in the United States and other democratic societies. Civic engage-

ment or “political participation” has long been understood to be a leading indicator of

the vibrancy of any democratic society. Alexis de Tocqueville (1969), the astute French

observer of the early nineteenth century, argued that it was not merely an indicator but a

cause. In his chapter in Democracy in America called “Causes Which Mitigate the Tyranny

of the Majority in the United States,” he identiﬁed the chief mitigating factor as the dis-

persal of government power. The dispersion is both across territory (today, the federal

government in Washington, D.C. and local governments in the 50 states plus the still

more-local municipalities, counties, and school districts that are sanctioned by states)

and within governments (legislative, executive, judicial) at both national and local levels.

Importantly, this dispersal of power operates cooperatively with a farrago of close-to-

home, intermediary institutions. These are mid-range solidarities that range from faith

communities and political parties to choirs, bowling leagues, and unions. These net-

works, known jointly as “civil society,” are outside government; yet they are its founda-

tion. This is because they join people together outside their families. “Americans of all

ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition,” de Tocqueville wrote,

are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial

associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types—reli-

gious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very

minute. . . . Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and

moral associations in America.

(p. 517)

A century and a half later, Robert Putnam (1995) wrote an article on the decline of

civic engagement in the United States. He called it “Bowling Alone.” His conclusion was

that civic decline had reached so far into society that, just as the number of people

reading a common newspaper or attending precinct meetings had declined, or going to

the Elks Lodge or a weekly card game, so had the number of people joining bowling

leagues. The whole system of social networks was declining. His research struck a chord

with scholars and pundits and popularized the concept “social capital”: these prosaic

social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trust that they generate and support.

Of special concern to civic educators today is the decline in civic engagement among

youth. Many high school seniors reach voting age before they graduate and, ironic-

ally, while they are sitting in the high school government course offered to seniors. But

research demonstrates that their political involvement is meager. Flanagan and Levine

(2010) provide the details:

Young adults today are less likely than their counterparts in the 1970s were to exhibit

nine out of ten important characteristics of citizenship: belonging to at least one

Citizenship Education in the United States s 351

group, attending religious services at least monthly, belonging to a union, reading

newspapers at least once a week, voting, being contacted by a political party, working

on a community project, attending club meetings, and believing that people are trust-

worthy. Only in a tenth form of citizenship—volunteering—are they more likely to

participate, probably as a result of deliberate efforts over the past several decades by

schools, colleges, and community groups to encourage volunteering. For several of

these ten types of engagement—notably voting—rates have risen in the 2000s com-

pared with the 1990s, but not enough to compensate for thirty years of decline.

(p. 161)

Are Americans participating less or differently? And, if less, is the decline more a matter

of delay or long-term decline? Difference theorists point to graduates who are recon-

necting with lost classmates on Facebook, stay-at-home parents who meet one another

on social networking portals such as Meetup, the proliferation of book clubs thanks to

Oprah and fan clubs thanks to the reality television show American Idol, and so forth.

Delay theorists emphasize that adolescence (a construct dating to approximately 1900

in the United States) is lengthening, which predictably delays civic engagement. This is

because civic engagement is related to life-cycle patterns and historical forces. The

young adult ﬁnishes school, moves out of the parental home, moves into the work

force, and starts a new family. These are watersheds that make regular engagement in

civic life more likely because the youth is outside the family of origin and spending

more time “in public” where she is exposed to diverse ideologies and lifestyles. The

young adult is thereby positioned on a social platform where it is easier to see oppor-

tunities for civic engagement, plus she is more available for recruitment into com-

munity activity (Finlay, Wray-Lake, & Flanagan, 2010). A broadened horizon alongside

availability to others—seeing and being seen—is a powerful combination for civic

involvement. But, it is easily interrupted, too. The Great Recession of 2008–2012 desta-

bilized the life-cycle transitions of the middle and working classes, and time spent in

gated communities has increased the segregation of Americans, thereby narrowing, not

broadening, their horizons. The sorting-by-incarceration of Black and Latino males

(Alexander, 2010) further entrenches a caste system in America, the civic engagement

consequences of which include temporary or, in some states, permanent restrictions on

voting rights and an “ex-con’s” lasting status as a second-class citizen.

To summarize: citizenship and citizenship education are old ideas and practices, and

they are venerable topics of scholarly inquiry. Furthermore, they are relative to regime

type and, therefore, hollow topics without the meanings, issues, and power relations

found in particular political contexts: Athens in the ﬁfth century

BCE, Lexington in 1775,

Gettysburg in 1863, Paris in 1789, Berlin in 1933, Birmingham in 1963, Arizona today.

Both topics ebb and ﬂow as objects of study depending on historical contingencies, and

both are back on the scholarly agenda today thanks to a combination of forces: a decline

in civic engagement, the intensiﬁcation of globalization and migration, and the appear-

ance of new patterns of integration and segregation.

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION MATTERS

The return of citizenship education to critical study, research, and development in the

United States is welcome news. It had been buried from the 1960s through the 1990s

352 s W.C. Parker

under a curious scholarly consensus that believed formal citizenship education in class-

rooms had no signiﬁcant effect on civic knowledge or behavior. The study that put the

nail in the cofﬁn was “Political Socialization and the High School Civics Curriculum

in the United States,” by Langton and Jennings (1968) in the American Political Science

Review. Personally, I began my teaching career in the aftermath of this study. I had just

completed a bachelor’s degree in political science and was enrolled in the University of

Colorado’s ﬁne, year-long, post-BA program in teacher education. Along with others

who were training to become high school government teachers, I learned of the study

and was puzzled not only by its ﬁndings but by the way they had been embraced by the

political science ﬁeld. The ﬁndings were truly counterintuitive. A maxim of both parent-

ing and educational research is that children stand a better chance of learning some-

thing if it is taught than if it is not, and if they study it than if they don’t. This is why

parents and teachers encourage students to attend rather than skip classes, to pay atten-

tion rather than sleep, and to do the homework; and it is why colleges are more likely to

admit applicants who have done well in their high school courses than those who have

failed them or dropped out.

Thirty years later, political scientists Niemi and Junn (1998) presented evidence and

analysis contrary to Langton and Jennings. On Langton and Jennings’ survey, civic know-

ledge had been measured by only six items. Niemi and Junn used the 1998 NAEP Civics

Assessment, which had 150 knowledge items. Moreover, these items were tied to actual

civics courses that students were likely to take. To show whether civics courses affect civic

knowledge, the knowledge measure needs to match the curriculum of the civic courses

whose effect is being determined. Niemi and Junn’s study did this. Not only did they tie

their study to actual civics coursework (vs. general political knowledge), they focused on

four aspects of coursework: amount, recency, topics addressed, and inclusion of current

events. They found that higher student knowledge was associated with higher amounts

and greater recency of civics courses, a greater range of topics, and more discussion of

current events.

Niemi and Junn’s (1998) study was a watershed that ended the “coursework doesn’t

matter” consensus and re-opened the gates to research on civics coursework generally

and kinds of civics coursework in particular (we will come to effective practices later in

this chapter). And because the recency of civics coursework had been shown to matter,

Niemi and another colleague (Niemi & Smith, 2001) immediately studied the prevalence

of the high school government course that students most often take in the twelfth grade.

They found that, after a temporary decline during the 1960s and 1970s (a period some-

times described as “curriculum anarchy” [e.g., Taylor & Haas, 1973, p. 83]), enrollment

in this course had returned to a high level. By 2001, 75% of high school students were

taking the course.

The high school government course deserves critical attention despite its homely

façade. It is a “structures and functions” course, its focus being “how government works”

in the United States. The subject matter includes the history and ratiﬁcation of the

Constitution, federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, landmark Supreme

Court cases, limited government, legislation, political parties, media, and interest groups.

The course is intriguing on the landscape of citizenship education because it is both pre-

valent and pedestrian. Though its footprint is enormous, it almost escapes detection—

lost in plain sight. Most students take it, but its mention in the citizenship education

literature is rare and then often derisive, with criticism of boring topics, maintenance of

Citizenship Education in the United States s 353

sociopolitical orthodoxies, and unrealistic portrayals of US democracy. Remarkably, its

curriculum has been settled for decades, so much so that the course escapes the partisan

public wrangling that routinely besets the US history curriculum.

FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES

Yet, citizenship education (like any common endeavor) cannot avoid politics. The dull

high school government course may ﬂy beneath the radar screen, but the daily conduct

of citizenship education in a democracy is lively and contentious on several fronts. In my

judgment, three are central. The ﬁrst issue is conceptual and concerns the objectives of

citizenship education: For what type of democratic regime do we want to educate stu-

dents in the United States? That is, what kinds of democratic political identity and cor-

responding virtues should schools try to cultivate? This involves a distinction between

liberal and illiberal democracy. The second issue concerns authority over the citizenship

education curriculum. In a theocracy or military regime, there is little question as to who

is authorized to shape and distribute the education of future citizens: priests or generals.

In a democracy, however, there are contending forces and interests, each clamoring for

a say. Which group(s) of adults can legitimately decide on the particulars of citizenship

education in schools? Parents? Professional educators? Citizens? The third issue stems

from the conﬂicts that arise in liberal-democratic regimes over the meaning of patriot-

ism and the tension between majority rule and personal freedom. Speciﬁcally, should

students be exposed to a range of beliefs, even those that oppose their parents’ beliefs?

That is, should they be taught to think for themselves?

The three issues are related. The founders of the United States created a liberal demo-

cracy, which guarantees personal freedom and human rights in addition to majority

rule. One implication is that parents cannot demand that schools cater to their own

ethnic customs, religious beliefs, or political ideologies. At least, they cannot demand

this if doing so would harm or interfere with or otherwise burden the customs, beliefs,

and ideologies of other families. Citizenship education is particularly interesting from

this liberal perspective not only because it aims to shape children into particular kinds

of citizens, but because it also aims to shape them into the kind of people who decide

for themselves what shape they will take. Accordingly, the teaching of critical thinking

and toleration as two hallmarks of good citizenship in a liberal democracy have been

challenged on the grounds that they might draw children away from the beliefs of their

parents. Should schools be able to interfere in family life in this way, and does liberal-

democratic citizenship education demand it? A consideration of the three issues will

afford a more robust understanding of the politics of citizenship education in the United

States.

Issue 1: Liberal or Illiberal Democracy?

A politician working to restore peace in a genocide-ravaged country today could very

well worry that free and fair elections might eventually be held under the banner of

“democracy.” Her concern is that the men who are thereby elected would be the same

racists and separatists who engineered the mass rape, murder, and plunder during the

genocide. It would be a democratic government—in Greek demos (the many) and cracy

(rule)—but it would ignore limits on its power and continue to deny civil rights and lib-

erties to members of the despised minority group. This would be an illiberal democracy.

354 s W.C. Parker

Popular sovereignty, made manifest in free and fair elections, is the critical attribute of

democracy, but more is required of a liberal democracy. As Crick (2008) wrote, liberal

democracy is a hybrid—a “fusion of the idea of the power of the people and the idea of

legally guaranteed individual rights” (p. 15; also Habermas, 1997).

Any sort of democratic regime—liberal or illiberal—is a rare occurrence histori-

cally, so much so that its absence at any time or in any place does not demand atten-

tion or explanation. Yet my experience in 40 years of teaching suggests that American

students of all ages take democracy for granted, as though it were common and easy

rather than rare and difﬁcult. Historians know better. They are surprised when demo-

cracies appear, all the more so when they develop and endure. Historians know that

tyranny—absolutism—is the historical norm, the most common forms being theo-

cracy, military dictatorship, and absolute monarchy—rule by clergy, colonels, and

kings. The third often combines with the ﬁrst in such a way that the monarch’s abso-

lute authority is believed to be supernatural—derived from the heavens (the “divine

right of kings”). By the time Aristotle wrote Politics, there had been such a variety of

political systems that he could classify and evaluate them. Among them were demo-

cracies, which he considered feckless: Either they devolved quickly into illiberal mob

rule (majority will without constitutional restraint) or oligarchy (an elected but

corrupt managerial class).

The founders of US constitutional democracy were also critical of democracy. Having

just won independence from the divine-right king of England, and having been avid

readers of ancient Greek and Roman and then Renaissance and Enlightenment thinkers,

the US founders were convinced that democracy’s prospects were bleak. Hamilton wrote

in Federalist No. 9 (1982, p. 44):

It is impossible to read the history of the petty Republics of Greece and Italy without

feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were

continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were

kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy.

Democracies usually failed, the founders believed, not for lack of splendid ideals but for

an excess of wishful thinking combined with bad planning. They failed because they

required “we the people” to be angels, which they are not. On this the historical record

needs no elaboration. As Madison (1937) wrote in Federalist No. 51, “If men were angels

no government would be necessary” (p. 337). Government is necessary because “we the

people” easily become an illiberal mob, seduced by demagogues, or a motley of interest

groups each blinded by its own passions. Madison wrote, “A dependence on the people

is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught

mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” For this reason, the men who founded

the US regime created a constitution that controlled both the people and the govern-

ment and aimed to constrain or prevent absolutism and oppression or, stated positively,

to preserve liberty and rights. (“Liberty is the right to do what the law permits,” Mon-

tesquieu wrote, summarizing the tension between political freedom and constraint.)

Among these precautions were the separation of powers into distinct branches of gov-

ernment, checks and balances that kept one branch from overwhelming the others, a

bicameral legislature, federalism, and, eventually, a Bill of Rights. These have become

widespread features of liberal democracies ever since.

Citizenship Education in the United States s 355

It is well known that illiberal oppressions based on race, class, and gender were

present even as these liberal-democratic innovations were being inscribed in the late

eighteenth century. When the US Constitution was ratiﬁed in 1787, African Americans

were chattel and women were only somewhat better off. Native peoples were in another

category still—savages, demons. “We the people” referred to White, male, property-

owning citizens of a certain age. Slaves and women were property. Liberal democracies

fall short of their aspirations (there are no ideal democracies), and this motivates social

movements that aim to close the gap between ideals and realities. The framers of the

US Constitution may have been the birth parents of liberal democracy on a large scale,

but those who were excluded became the adoptive, nurturing parents. That is, the core

values of liberal democracy have been pursued not necessarily by those already secured

within “we the people” but by those people living at the margins and ﬁghting for inclu-

sion (Okihiro, 1994). The woman’s suffrage and civil rights movements noted in the ﬁrst

paragraph of this chapter are the iconic cases in the United States.

Issue 2: Who Has Legitimate Educational Authority?

Who has the legitimate authority in a liberal-democratic regime to decide how the next

generation of citizens shall be educated? The US Constitution reserves education policy

to the states but does not resolve the matter further. Who or what will ﬁll in the details

of curriculum and instruction?

Parents are key players in curricular decision making, of course. As Dewey (1956)

wrote, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the com-

munity want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and

unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy” (p. 7). This is an appealing asser-

tion of collective responsibility for all children, not just our own children. Yet, Amy

Gutmann (1999) noticed its undemocratic contradiction. Where are “we the people” in

Dewey’s formulation? In other words, where is the citizenry working together to create

and maintain a free society within the constraints of a constitution? The “enforcement

of any moral ideal of education,” Gutmann writes, “whether it be ideologically liberal

or conservative, without the consent of citizens subverts democracy” (p. 14). A liberal-

democratic society, because it values rights and liberties, requires citizens to deliberate

collectively about the education of future citizens. Citizens are obliged to negotiate

the curriculum of democratic education across plural interests and beliefs just as they

negotiate tax rules, gun law, and foreign policy across plural interests and beliefs. The

“best and wisest parents” are not of a single voice. They want different goods for their

children. They don’t and won’t agree. This pluralism is a fact of life in society, and a

liberal-democratic regime embraces it.

Some parents will claim they have a natural right to exclusive educational authority.

They will assert this because, ﬁrst, the children in question are “their” children (the propri-

etary assumption), and second because parents are naturally concerned to maximize the

welfare of their children (the altruistic or evolutionary assumption). But these assump-

tions are specious, as both educators and citizens are quick to point out. Parents may

have given birth to or adopted children, but that does not establish possession. Children

could be (and have been) imagined to “belong” to the gods, the state, or the village, for

example. The propensity of at least some families to teach racist, ethnocentric, and sexist

values that contradict liberal-democratic ideals—particularly the bedrock values of civic

equality, popular sovereignty, tolerance, inalienable rights, and liberty—undermines the

356 s W.C. Parker

second assumption, not to mention the frequency of child abuse and neglect. Parents

cannot hold their children in a state of what Eamon Callan calls “ethical servility” (1997,

p. 152) where they exist only to fulﬁll their parents’ wishes and are never taught to think

for themselves. As Walter Lippmann (1993) wrote, curriculum controversies “are among

the bitterest political struggles which now divide the nations” (p. 22). But why the bit-

terness? Why not simply disagreement? He believed the assertion of parental authority is

often the cause:

Wherever two or more groups within a state differ in religion, or in language and in

nationality, the immediate concern of each group is to use the schools to preserve

its own faith and tradition. For it is in the school that the child is drawn towards or

drawn away from the religion and the patriotism of its parents.

(p. 23)

Most parents are far from holding their children in a state of ethical servility, so let

us not overstate the liberal-democratic case against parents being the sole authori-

ties for the education of democratic citizens. Still, we must note that neither edu-

cators nor democratic citizens are inclined, as parents may be, to claim exclusive

educational authority, for that would be patently undemocratic. Rather, both groups

claim a seat at the deliberative table alongside parents where curricular policy is

developed in a democratic society. Gutmann (1999) argues that collective moral

argument and decision making (collective deliberation) among the various educa-

tional stakeholders is the most democratically justiﬁable approach to the authority

question.

In brief, who should decide the curriculum by which the next generation

of democrats shall be educated? On Gutmann’s analysis, consistent with her political

theory of deliberative democracy, the answer is straightforward: All of us together,

weighing the alternatives, arguing across differences, and, when needed, voting to

decide the issue. After all, the most important thing adults can do together, across

their differences, is decide how to educate their children for what will be a shared

future. This is not something they can be doing in isolation, not if they aim to have

a liberal democracy.

Issue 3: Should Schools Teach Toleration and Critical Thinking?

Some readers will be surprised to learn that a perennial controversy affecting citizenship

education in the United States is whether public schools should aim to teach critical

thinking and toleration. It is surprising because both are usually considered unremark-

able, pedestrian aims that are intuitively fundamental to education, almost deﬁning it

(Jefferson’s “their minds must be improved to a certain degree”). So accustomed have

American citizens become to freely exercising or seeking their rights and liberties that,

generally, toleration has become a mundane aim, not a public controversy. Episodes of

intolerance, such as hate crimes, are generally reviled.

Governors appoint commissions

and order ﬂags ﬂown at half-mast; legislatures pass resolutions; vigils are held. As Justice

Brennan wrote matter-of-factly in 1989,

We are not an assimilative, homogeneous society, but a facilitative, pluralistic one, in

which we must be willing to abide someone else’s unfamiliar or even repellent prac-

tice because the same tolerant impulse protects our own idiosyncrasies.

Citizenship Education in the United States s 357

Nevertheless, challenges to the teaching of toleration and critical thinking arise regu-

larly, and there follow court cases and turbulent school board elections. The case of

Mozert v. Hawkins County served as a bellwether in 1987. Conservative parents claimed

that a pro-toleration, multicultural policy by Tennessee public schools was intolerant of

their own “born again Christian” world-view and undermined their First Amendment

right to freely exercise their religion and pass it along to their children. The school

board had unanimously voted to adopt a series of basal reading textbooks that exposed

their children to beliefs contrary to their own in several categories. Quoting from the

court’s decision:

[A parent] identiﬁed passages from stories and poems used in [the publisher’s] series

that fell into each category. Illustrative is her ﬁrst category, futuristic supernatural-

ism, which she deﬁned as teaching “Man As God.” Passages that she found offensive

described Leonardo da Vinci as the human with a creative mind that “came closest

to the divine touch.” Similarly, she felt that a passage entitled “Seeing Beneath the

Surface” related to an occult theme, by describing the use of imagination as a vehicle

for seeing things not discernible through our physical eyes. She interpreted a poem,

“Look at Anything,” as presenting the idea that by using imagination a child can

become part of anything and thus understand it better. [The parent] testiﬁed that

it is an “occult practice” for children to use imagination beyond the limitation of

scriptural authority.

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the citizens of Tennessee had a compelling

interest here, which justiﬁed the burden being placed on these parents. That interest,

quoting the Court, is that “public education must prepare pupils for citizenship in the

Republic,” which includes exposing children to diverse beliefs and controversial issues.

More recently, the platform of the Texas Republican Party of 2012, following the

battle over the state’s revised curriculum standards for social studies,

contained this

plank: “We oppose the teaching of . . . critical thinking skills and similar programs that

. . . have the purpose of challenging the student’s ﬁxed beliefs and undermining parental

authority” (p. 12). This statement reveals, again, that citizenship education can conﬂict

with parental authority when the child, per Lippmann’s observation earlier, is “drawn

away from the religion and the patriotism of its parents.”

A number of theorists in addition to Gutmann, notably Brighouse (2000), Callan

(1997), and Levinson (2012) argue that a liberal-democratic regime has a morally

compelling obligation to educate its citizens both to think critically and to toler-

ate one another. As we saw in the Mozert case, the courts often agree. The reason is

that the US regime type exists to maintain individuals’ rights and liberties, which

include their freedom to pursue happiness in whatever direction they choose, within

the law: a life of faith and family, or not; a life of science and industry, or not; a life

of baseball caps or hijabs, or neither. This regime type assumes that individuals will

differ on conceptions of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and that they have a

natural right to do so. The ensuing freedom leads to further proliferation of diversity

in all directions, thus requiring a political culture of tolerant co-existence. This regime

type assumes, further, that these individuals are capable of making the decision to

“consent” to be governed, as the Declaration of Independence states.

Young children

cannot consent, which is one reason why they are in the custody of their parents. But

358 s W.C. Parker

as young people approach their “majority” or “emancipation,” as it is called (legal

adulthood, independence, and responsibility for conduct), this is precisely what is

required: an independent decision to live within the social contract, with rights and

liberties both guaranteed by and constrained by law. Consent requires critical think-

ing or in the language of political philosophy “political autonomy”: the capacity to

make un-coerced decisions—to develop one’s own views without manipulation by

others.

Dewey characterized this kind of education—liberal civic education—as a “method

of intelligence” or “intelligence in operation.” It is a middle way between extremes. The

political left and right have different conceptions of the good life, and they often see

schools as technologies for realizing them. On the right (e.g., Finn, 2003), students

should be taught to serve, succeed in, and preserve the current social order. Patriotism

on the right is pride in what has already been accomplished—the status quo—and one’s

civic duty is to protect and nurture it. On the left (e.g., Counts, 1932), students should

be taught to transform the social order so as to realize a more just and vibrant demo-

cracy, one that would include the economy rather than leaving it solely in the hands of

the market. Patriotism on the left is pride in democratic ideals, and one’s civic duty is to

help achieve them. Dewey advocated neither of these but carved a middle way: Students

should be taught to use their minds well—to think critically and to value and use scient-

iﬁc inquiry. They should not be told to what ends they should use these competencies,

however, but left free to determine their own ends and path. It is up to them—well-edu-

cated democratic citizens, trained thinkers—to engage in the ongoing work of govern-

ment of, by, and for the people.

The obligation of schools to teach critical thinking and tolerance does not license

them to indoctrinate students into a particular conception of the good life, only to enable

students to think for themselves and let others think for themselves. Here, then, is the

famous tension: Liberal democracy is neutral as to conceptions of the good life and it

is committed (not neutral) to the values of liberal democracy. Citizens, therefore, have

both freedoms and obligations. Liberty is not independence from the community, but a

dimension of community. Quoting Aristotle, “Individuals are so many parts all equally

depending on the whole which alone can bring self-sufﬁciency” (1958, p. 6).

By now it will have occurred to readers that Dewey’s middle way wasn’t so neutral

after all. The child’s character is deliberately formed to meet regime requirements; she is

required to become a tolerant, independent, and critical thinker. And this is why liberal

democratic regimes face an enduring role conﬂict. While parents may and do indoctri-

nate children into particular beliefs and lifestyles—this is the parent’s right—civic edu-

cators are obliged to “prepare pupils for citizenship in the Republic” as ruled in Mozert.

The regime has a compelling interest in cultivating liberal-democratic character—citi-

zens who are democratically enlightened and politically engaged (Parker, 2008). These

are citizens who know and do particular things. They know the historical rarity of demo-

cracy and the historically predictable routines by which it descends into demagoguery

and autocracy. They know why in the more successful democracies power is divided

among “branches” and why the state is neutral (to an extent) and non-interfering as to

religion. They do things, too. They vote and serve on juries, for example, and call out

intolerance and discrimination where they ﬁnd them. Importantly, they protect from

governmental or popular incursions not only their own group but other groups. They

do this because they know something: Like King (1963) sitting in Birmingham City Jail,

Citizenship Education in the United States s 359

they know that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (p. 77). Moreover,

they can and do endeavor to communicate with one another across their differences in

ways that make liberal-democratic living possible—Dewey’s “mode of associated living,

of conjoint communicated experience” (1985, p. 93). This becomes their common way of

life, a public similarity bridging private difference, to which children are assimilated at

the common school.

CLASSROOM AND SCHOOL PRACTICE

How can we characterize the practices of classroom and school-based citizenship educa-

tion in the United States? The aforementioned high school government course plays an

important, formal role in the upper grades, but so do the many less formal classroom

and school-wide practices at all levels. The daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, for

example, is required by law in 35 states and practiced by custom in most of them (Pis-

catelli, 2003). “Citizenship” (comportment) marks are often given in the lower grades

along with subject area marks, and homeroom meetings and student councils continue

to dot the school landscape. Some elementary school principals convene one council

for grades 1–3 and another for grades 4–6. “Our one purpose here,” one principal told

the children, “is to identify problems and try to solve them” (Parker, 2011a, p. 97). Like

the US Senate, each class elects two members to serve on the council. These students

may be told they are delegates of their classrooms, not representatives, and consequently

must vote at council meetings as instructed by their classmates. Therefore, the elections

matter to the class, and class meetings at which delegates are given instructions are an

important part of the program. In such a council program, even primary-grade children

gain experience with electing and being elected, with majority rule, with the distinction

between delegate and representative, and with discussion of issues that are important to

them.

Returning to the formal curriculum,

the US history curriculum is typically taught

across the nation in grades ﬁve, eight, and eleven. Not merely historical or historiographic

in emphasis, it serves a civic, nation-building purpose (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Epstein,

2009). Nations everywhere create schools to advance national cohesion, a positive story,

and a national imaginary, and the US history curriculum follows suit. Its subject matter

at all three levels centers on the founding of the nation, the Constitution, its greatest

crisis (the Civil War), and the fulﬁllment, to an extent, of its promise in the Civil Rights

Movement. Each of these four eras has one or two events at its center; consequently, a

narrative history style (“And then what happened?” and “Who did it?”) is both common

and popular with old and young students alike. Indeed, the evidentiary historiographic

approach is rare: Few history teachers even in the upper grades engage students in histor-

ical inquiry where the emphasis is on the creation and evaluation of claims and their

warrants. This practice is unfortunate, for as Barton and Levstik (2010) conclude, stu-

dents are left with

no way of distinguishing historical claims that are based on evidence from those that

aren’t—such as myths, legends, or outright lies. The inability to distinguish between

a myth and a warranted assertion destroys the foundation for democracy, because

students will be susceptible to any outrageous story they may be told.

(pp. 39–40)

360 s W.C. Parker

With this introduction behind us, let us turn brieﬂy to three dimensions of citizen-

ship-education practice in US classrooms and schools: inequality, discussion-oriented

pedagogy, and the role of non-governmental organizations.

Inequality

First, classroom and school practices of citizenship education in the United States are

variant and unequal. They vary because the national government plays only a small

role in citizenship education in schools; school practices are reserved by the Constitu-

tion to the 50 states, most of which further devolve authority to local school districts—

some 16,000 little ministries of education with an elected school board. Contrast this

decentered system to the standardization and uniformity found in many other modern

democracies; in Singapore for example, where all students take a common civic educa-

tion course using materials produced by the central curriculum ofﬁce (Sim, 2011), or in

England where a new citizenship education program—the ﬁrst ever in that nation—was

instituted nation-wide in 2001 (Kerr & Cleaver, 2009).

But alongside state and local variation in civic education in the United States, which

is legitimate in a federalist regime, lies an illegitimate form of variation: inequality. This

is the gap between students who receive high and low quality civic education in school.

It is called the “civic achievement” or “civic opportunity” or “civic empowerment” gap

(e.g., Levinson, 2012). A consensus report in 2003 (Gibson & Levine) and again in 2011

(Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools) identiﬁed six research-supported practices

in civic education, each related to higher levels of student civic knowledge, skill, commit-

ment, and actual civic involvement. They are:

1. Learning information about local, state, and national government.

2. Opportunities to debate and discuss current events and other issues that matter

to students.

3. Service-learning opportunities.

4. Participation in extra-curriculum activities.

5. Opportunities for decision-making and governance experiences.

6. Participation in simulations of civic processes.

These practices are distributed unequally in the United States on the basis of social

class, ethnicity, and college-going plans. In a sweeping study of California high school

seniors, Kahne and Middaugh (2010) found that African American students were less

likely than others to have had participation-oriented government courses, less likely to

report having opportunities to participate in school decision making, and less likely to

report opportunities for discussions and simulations. Latino students reported fewer

opportunities for service than did other students and also fewer experiences with simu-

lations. Also, seniors who did not expect to take part in any form of post-secondary

education reported signiﬁcantly fewer opportunities to develop civic skills and com-

mitments than seniors with post-secondary plans. The Campaign for the Civic Mission

of Schools (2011) concluded that schools exacerbate the civic empowerment gap “by

providing poor and nonwhite students fewer and less high-quality learning opportun-

ities than they provide to middle class and wealthy white students” (p. 19).

Let us focus ﬁrst on practice 1—learning about government—and then turn to some

of the others. As we saw earlier, most high school students take a US government course.

Citizenship Education in the United States s 361

Additionally, most take a US history course three times, in grades 5, 8, and 11. Each time

they likely are exposed, in one form or another, to the core texts of the US regime (the

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States) and to informa-

tion about their creation. Because social class remains the strongest predictor of the

particular school curriculum and classroom resources to which American students are

exposed, and because the rich–poor gap in the United States is widening,

it is difﬁcult

to determine the number of students who are exposed to additional resources, from The

Federalist Papers to King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. What is surprising to observers

from other nations (e.g., Frazer, 2002) is that there is widespread bi-partisan agreement

in the United States on these and a handful of additional texts that are considered “core.”

Accordingly, there is in a kind of “civic canon” alongside a consensus on research-based

pedagogies. To summarize, while the distribution of political information, core texts,

and best practices is unequal, there is remarkable agreement on what they are.

Discussion-Oriented Pedagogy

We can consider practices 2, 5, and 6 together under the name “discussion-oriented peda-

gogy.” (For reasons of space, we will leave aside practices 3 and 4.

) Practices 2, 5, and 6

easily converge in classroom practice—they ﬁt together well—and each involves participa-

tory, active learning and discussion. Practice 2 is teaching and learning about current events

and issues. These are not synonyms. Events are happenings in time and space (an election,

a natural disaster, an incident in the school building) whereas issues are controversies or

dilemmas involving value tensions (What is fair tax policy? Should voting be required?).

Neither events nor issues are self-evident; each is a “text” requiring interpretation, and this

is best done with others. As Bridges (1979) wrote, the advantage of discussion is “to set

alongside one perception of the matter under discussion the several perceptions of other

participants, challenging our own view of things with those of others” (p. 50).

Practice 5 involves decision making about community and school problems. Com-

munity problems often are current events and issues, it should be noted; school problems

are as well, and these can be studied and deliberated in the aforementioned classroom

meetings and school councils. Practice 6 is also participatory, for students take roles

and, with them, social positions and political perspectives. Discussions are conducted

in these roles. The simulated civic process may be a mock trial, election, congressional

ﬂoor debate, committee hearing, or a moot (already decided) Supreme Court case. The

branches of government are involved as are media, political parties, and interest groups.

Fourth-grade students may be simulating their community—its politics, businesses, mail

and other public services—while seniors in the government course simulate the federal

government or city hall, from campaigning to law making and judicial review.

Discussion-oriented pedagogy has always been popular with civic educators but

has grown since the 1980s and been subjected to an array of investigations and design

experiments (e.g., Beck, 2003; Billings & Fitzgerald, 2002; Hahn, 1998; Haroutunian-

Gordon, 2009; Hess, 2009; Larson, 2003; Paley, 1992; Parker et al. 2011, 2013; Power,

1988; Torney-Purta & Wilkenfeld, 2009). The rationale, in brief, is that democratic

regimes entail government by discussion. The ability to discuss—to argue and deliberate,

to speak and listen to strangers—has been a central strategy for democratic public policy

formation at least since Socrates held discussions in the agora. It becomes, therefore, a

curricular end of schools in democratic regimes, not simply a lively instructional means.

As an end, a goal, it is part and parcel to schools’ democratic mission.

362 s W.C. Parker

Discussion-oriented pedagogy takes advantage of powerful assets that prevail at

school (Parker, 2003). First, diversity. Schools are not private places like our homes but

public places with diverse students. When ﬁve-year-olds come to kindergarten, they

emerge from the private silos of babyhood, family, and kin into the mixed public arena of

acquaintances and strangers. While some schools are more diverse than others, all schools

are diverse to some pedagogically meaningful extent. The work of cognitive developmen-

talists has established this (e.g., Finlay et al., 2010; Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983). In

a public school, furthermore, boys and girls are both there; Jews, Protestants, Catholics,

Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists may all be there; there are racial and class differences,

and therefore differences in social status and power; and immigrants from the world over

may be there. Ideological differences are present, too, and not to be overlooked (Hess,

2009). This variety does not exist at home, church, temple, or mosque.

A second asset that is abundant is schools, thanks to the diversity of students and the

tasks of educating them and keeping them safe, is the prevalence of problems. These

problems are mutual, collective concerns; they are public problems. There are two kinds

of problems at school: social and academic. Social problems arise over resources, pol-

icies, classroom assignments, injustices, scarcity, safety, and the myriad frictions of social

interaction. Academic problems, on the other hand, reside in each discipline. Expertise

in a discipline is deﬁned by one’s knowledge of its core and emerging problems. Both

social and academic problems lend themselves to discursive practices: communication

about the nature of the problem (interpretation) and communication about solutions

(deliberation). Interpretation and deliberation correspond to discussions of powerful

literature and speeches (these are seminars) and discussions of controversial issues where

a decision is needed as to what course of action to take (e.g., Structured Academic Contro-

versy).

Practices 2, 5, and 6 mobilize these assets, which is to say they lend themselves to

increasing the variety and frequency of interaction among diverse students around social

and academic problems. If the school is homogeneous or if the school is diverse but cur-

riculum tracks keep students apart, then the ﬁrst asset is impeded. Still, school leaders

can capitalize on whatever diversity is present and increase the interaction among stu-

dents, both in the classroom and in student councils and other governance settings. As

Paley (1992) has demonstrated, this discursive pedagogy is perfectly suitable for even the

youngest children in kindergarten.

Inﬂuential Organizations

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) understandably play a large role in civic educa-

tion in a decentralized school system. They produce classroom materials, lesson plans,

and professional development opportunities for teachers. They have even helped write

curriculum standards, a task reserved for government agencies in most other regimes.

The most prominent among these NGOs are those that have networks spanning the 50

states. Here is a sample:

s iCivics is the creation of former US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

It features an innovative website and instructional video games for students.

s Street Law developed the leading website for teaching about landmark cases of the

Supreme Court. It also brings teachers to the Court for professional development,

and across the US it connects law school students with high school classrooms.

Citizenship Education in the United States s 363

s Close Up brings middle and high school students on ﬁeld trips to the nation’s

capital each year for a close-up experience with US government and politics.

s Kidsvoting produces opportunities for experiential learning about voting and elec-

tions, including the right to vote and active citizenship.

s 4HECenter for Civic Education produces We The People and Project Citizen, widely

successful programs that are practiced in every state. We The People concentrates

on historical knowledge while Project Citizen engages students in community

problem solving.

s 4HE Constitutional Rights Foundation produces Deliberating in a Democracy, in

which high school students engage in authentic civic deliberations, and a popular

newsletter for history and government classes, The Bill of Rights in Action.

s Facing History and Ourselves produces lessons and professional development for

teaching students to take action against injustice and bigotry of all sorts, especially

racism and anti-semitism.

s 4HE #OLLEGE "OARDS Advanced Placement (AP) program is expanding to new

groups of students as local superintendents lower the threshold for entry into

courses, sometimes even requiring them. Consequently, the number of students

taking the AP version of the high school government course is skyrocketing (see

Parker et al., 2011, 2013).

CONCLUSION

The ﬁve anchoring concepts of this review were citizenship, citizenship education, regime

type, liberal democracy, and classroom and school practice. Citizenship and citizenship

education are old ideas, and today they are again at the forefront of scholarship in the

social sciences and education. A liberal-democratic regime such as the United States aims

to balance individual rights and liberties with a common political culture. In its schools,

the regime has to be more or less neutral (impartial) with respect to differences, such as

religious belief and political ideology; yet it is obliged also to educate students to value

liberal democracy and to possess the knowledge and skills, such as toleration and critical

thinking, needed to sustain it. This is the regime’s unique brand of moral and character

education. Accordingly, value neutrality is practiced alongside value commitment, and

conﬂict inevitably arises among parents, educators, and the state. Democratic educa-

tion cannot be democratic education without this tension; it comes with the territory of

liberal democracy and its array of conﬂicting interests each endeavoring to express the

freedom that the regime is established to protect. There are rival and incompatible con-

ceptions of the good life, of god and country, of community and individual freedom. Of

course, there are power and history, too, which advantage some conceptions over others

and fuel the struggles that attempt to redraw the playing ﬁeld.

I opened this chapter with a Jefferson quote for two reasons. The ﬁrst is its substan-

tive meaning: democratic citizens are not born with the knowledge, skills, and character

they need. This is the assertion that justiﬁes public education generally and citizenship

or civic education in particular. Second, the assertion serves a discursive function, which

is to locate this review not in universal verities but in a particular time, place, and polit-

ical regime: the United States of America, its Constitution, and its political culture. In

this particular context, unequal access to effective classroom practice is a paramount

problem. Alongside it lies another: illiberal groups that seek to exempt students from

364 s W.C. Parker

exposure to diversity and from learning to think critically and independently. These

exemptions are problematic because they undermine democratic education at its root:

informing a person’s capacity to make an un-coerced decision to consent to be governed

and, reciprocally, to govern a diverse society. Present and future attempts to solve the ﬁrst

problem are likely to encounter opposition from groups that seek exemptions, and this

ongoing conﬂict summarizes a key skirmish in citizenship education in the United States

today.

AFTERWORD

I want to recommend two other reviews of citizenship education in the United States

that will serve as complements to this one: one by Carole L. Hahn (2008) and another by

Kathleen Knight-Abowitz and Jason Harnish (2006).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

My thanks to Carole Hahn, Kathleen Knight-Abowitz, Carol Coe, Regie Routman, Joe

Jenkins, and the editors for their helpful reviews of earlier drafts of this chapter.

NOTES

1. I return to the curriculum in the ﬁnal section of the chapter.

2. Unfortunately their return to scholarly interest does not mirror a return to classroom and school practice.

Citizenship education and, more broadly, social studies (studies of the social disciplines: history, political

science, economics, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology) of any sort have been pushed in some

locales to the margins of the curriculum, particularly in elementary and middle schools. This is due to the

frenzied attention now being paid to testing-and-accountability and “STEM” (the “harder” disciplines of

science, technology, engineering, and math). This squeezing of citizenship education, it should be noted, has

had a disproportionate impact on the most disadvantaged students (Kahne & Middaugh, 2010; Rothstein &

Jacobson, 2006). See the “Inequality” section later in this chapter.

3. Historical note: The “tyranny of the majority,” from Aristotle onward, is regarded as the primary threat to

democracy and the reason why many democracies fail. Madison’s project in The Federalist No. 10 was to

solve this problem. Later, it is on de Tocqueville’s mind, too, coming as he was from the tyranny of the

Jacobin “Terror” of the French Revolution.

4. See Dewey (1985) on the personal and public effects of lives lived segregated, and the education thus

afforded as “partial and distorted” (p. 89); also Parker (1996).

5. Both studies have been widely reviewed. See Avery (2000), Galston (2001), and Torney-Purta (1999).

6. See Zimmerman’s (2002) history of this contention and McKinley (2010) for a recent example: “Texas

Conservatives Win Curriculum Change.”

7. Because these are roles, not persons, they overlap. Many parents are citizens, many teachers are parents, etc.

8. Certainly not always (e.g., Nussbaumn, 2012).

9. See Macedo’s analysis (1995).

10. The new standards emphasize “the superiority of American capitalism, question the Founding Fathers’ com-

mitment to a purely secular government, and present Republican political philosophies in a more positive

light” (McKinley, 2010, p. A10).

11. “. . . life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among

men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . .”

12. I am grateful to William Stanley (2010 and personal communications) for his analysis of the transmission-

transformation question.

13. In addition to Parker (2011a) see Howard and Kenny (1992) and Power (1988) on robust forms of student

participation in school governance.

14. On civic learning outside school, there is a burgeoning literature, e.g., Bennett (2010), and Biesta, Lawy, and

Kelly (2009).

Citizenship Education in the United States s 365

15. There are other inequalities, too. See, for example, Dabach’s (2012) examination of this intriguing asymmetry:

teachers who are legal citizens teaching about citizenship and voting to immigrant students who are not.

16. The United States has the greatest income inequality of any wealthy nation in the world (Wilkinson &

Pickett, 2010).

17. But see chapters by Hart and Power, this volume, and Billig, Root, and Jesse, 2005.

18. On this distinction, see Parker 2006, 2010, and 2011b.

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368

FOSTERING THE MORAL AND CIVIC DEVELOPMENT OF

COLLEGE STUDENTS

Anne Colby

MORAL AND CIVIC DEVELOPMENT AS GOALS OF HIGHER EDUCATION

This chapter takes up the question of what kinds of inﬂuence undergraduate education

can have on students’ development as ethical, committed, and engaged human beings

and citizens. The undergraduate years are just one part of a life-long developmental

process but, especially if the efforts are intentionally designed with these outcomes in

mind, colleges can establish some groundwork that students will later build on, shape

the intellectual frameworks and habits of mind they bring to their adult experiences,

change the way they understand the responsibilities that are central to their sense of self,

teach them to offer and demand evidence and justiﬁcation for their moral and polit-

ical positions, and develop wiser judgment in approaching situations and questions that

represent potential turning points in their lives.

If a college education is to support the kind of learning graduates need in order to

be involved and responsible citizens, its goals must go beyond the development of intel-

lectual and technical skills and beginning mastery of a professional or scholarly domain.

They should include the competence to act in the world and the judgment to do so

wisely. A full account of competence, including occupational competence, must include

consideration of judgment, the appreciation of ends as well as means, and the broad

implications and consequences of one’s actions and choices. Education is not complete

until students not only have acquired knowledge, but can use that knowledge to act

responsibly in the world.

The suggestion that colleges and universities ought to educate for moral and civic

values, ideals, and standards raises potentially contentious questions about what

those values and ideals should be. Fortunately, there are some basic values that form a

common ground to guide higher education institutions’ efforts to educate their students

as responsible citizens of a democracy. Prominent among these core values are intellec-

tual integrity, concern for truth, and academic freedom. By their very nature, it is also

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 369

important for colleges to foster values such as mutual respect, open-mindedness, a will-

ingness to listen to and take seriously the ideas of others, procedural fairness, and public

discussion of contested issues. The academic enterprise would be seriously compromised

if these values ceased to guide scholarship, teaching, and learning, however imperfect the

guidance may be in practice.

Another important source of a common core of values derives from educational

institutions’ obligation to educate students for responsible democratic citizenship. Most

college and university mission statements—for both private and public institutions—

explicitly refer to their responsibility to educate for leadership and contribution to society.

This conception of higher education in the United States dates back to the founding of

the country and implies the centrality of values that include mutual respect and toler-

ance, concern for both the rights and the welfare of individuals and the community,

recognition that each individual is part of the larger social fabric, critical self-reﬂection,

and a commitment to civil and rational discourse and procedural impartiality (Galston,

1991; Gutmann, 1987; Macedo, 2000).

Beyond this generic set of core values that derive from the intellectual and civic pur-

poses of higher education, some private colleges (and even a few public ones) stand

for more speciﬁc moral, cultural, or religious values. These institutions’ particular mis-

sions—and the implications of these missions for the educational programs—are made

clear to prospective students and faculty, thus providing the basis for informed choice in

deciding whether to join a higher education community that professes particular values

along with those that are inherent in the academic enterprise. The most obvious examples

are religiously afﬁliated schools that offer faith-based education. Among public institu-

tions, military academies are mandated to educate military ofﬁcers, so their values are

deﬁned with reference to this goal. There are other public colleges that were established

to serve particular populations, such as (American Indian) tribal colleges, which often

explicitly acknowledge special values, such as traditional tribal values, in their curricula

and programs, and private colleges that serve groups such as women, African-American

women, and African-American men, drawing on their relevant histories in order to best

serve these populations.

If the values on which there is broad consensus within an institution are taken ser-

iously, they constitute strong guiding principles for programs of moral and civic devel-

opment in higher education. Even so, they leave open to debate which principles should

be given priority when they conﬂict as well as the application of the principles to many

particular situations. Especially in institutions that stand for a commitment to rational

public discourse, as higher education must, the most difﬁcult questions of conﬂicting

values are left to public debate and individual discernment. Moral and civic education

provides the tools for these discussions and judgments.

KEY DIMENSIONS OF MORAL AND CIVIC LEARNING

Research on human development reveals three major clusters of capacities that are crit-

ical to fully mature moral and civic functioning, and all three can continue to develop

during the college years, regardless of the age of the students. The ﬁrst main area is

moral and civic understanding. This includes interpretation, judgment, knowledge,

understanding of complex issues and institutions, and a sophisticated grasp of ethical

and democratic principles.

370 s A. Colby

The second major area has less to do with understanding what is right than motiva-

tion to do the right thing. This cluster includes goals and values, interests, commitments,

conviction, and perseverance in the face of challenges. It also includes a sense of efﬁcacy

and emotions such as compassion, hope, and inspiration. Closely related to these dimen-

sions is the individual’s identity, a sense of who she is and what kind of a person she

wants to be.

The third broad category is the domain of practice. Fully effective citizenship requires

a well-developed capacity for effective communication, including moral and political

discourse; many speciﬁc skills of political participation; the capacity to work effect-

ively with people, including those who are very different from oneself; and the ability to

organize other people for action.

First year college students exhibit a wide range of development in all of these areas.

Students who enter college as adults may be more fully developed on many of these

dimensions than younger students. But this is not necessarily true, since most studies

show developmental variables to be more highly correlated with educational attainment

than with age.

Moral and Civic Understanding, Judgment, and Knowledge

Moral Judgment. The ability to think clearly about difﬁcult moral issues is important

not only in the domain of personal morality but also in civic and political affairs, since

they so often entail moral issues such as balancing the rights and welfare of individuals

and groups. In response to research ﬁndings and critiques of various kinds, many fea-

tures of the cognitive approach to moral development have been questioned and revised,

and moral judgment has been reconceived as only one component in a complex set of

processes. (See, e.g., Snarey & Samuelson, this volume; Turiel, 2008.) Even so, Kohlberg’s

(1969) description of the increasing sophistication of people’s capacity to think about

difﬁcult moral issues remains a useful tool for operationalizing the intellectual side of

moral growth, a dimension of morality that has obvious relevance for institutions of

higher education.

Kohlberg proposed that the underlying logic or structure of individuals’ thinking

about moral issues can be described independently of the content of their beliefs, and that

this logic becomes more sophisticated and functionally adequate as development pro-

ceeds. In Kohlberg’s scheme, moral judgment moves from simple conceptions of moral-

ity grounded in unilateral authority and individual reciprocity to judgments grounded

in shared social norms to an appreciation of a more complex social system to a per-

spective that is capable of evaluating the existing social system in relation to some more

fundamental principles of justice. These shifts have important implications for people’s

understanding of and judgments about a whole range of important issues. Kohlberg’s

description of development within a framework of justice is particularly important for

thinking about the civic goals of American higher education, since justice and human

rights are central to US systems of politics and law.

Related Dimensions of Social Cognition. Moral judgment is part of the broader

domain of social cognition, which includes a number of other dimensions that have also

been framed in cognitive-developmental terms. Investigators studying the development

of individuals’ understanding of friendship, interpersonal perspective-taking, political

understanding, and religious faith have all described trajectories of increasing maturity,

which are said to emerge from individuals’ attempts to interpret their experience as they

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 371

interact with other people and social institutions. Although development within an indi-

vidual can proceed at different rates in the various domains of social cognition, the basic

patterns of developmental change within these domains show striking parallels.

Studies of political understanding (Adelson & O’Neil, 1966; Helwig, 1995; Jankowski,

1992; Raaijmakers, Verbogt, & Vollebergh, 1998) have revealed developmental shifts

toward increasingly subtle and complex conceptions of social and political institutions.

Concepts such as civil liberties, methods of social control, and governance show regular

patterns of elaboration as development proceeds. Political thinking has been described

as moving from the personal or authoritarian toward greater comprehension of social

structures and general principles. For example, younger adolescents are usually insens-

itive to individual liberties and opt for authoritarian solutions to political problems. At

the same time, they are unable to achieve a differentiated view of the social order, and

thus cannot grasp the legitimate claim of the community upon the citizen (Adelson &

O’Neil, 1966).

Moral Interpretation. Even though the way people think about moral issues is

important, this does not mean that morality is always conscious, rational, reﬂective,

and deliberative. Often it is not. It is useful to distinguish between two quite different

kinds of moral process, which have been termed “reﬂective morality” and “habitual or

spontaneous morality” (Davidson & Youniss, 1991; Walker, 2000). In daily life, reﬂective

morality, which involves careful evaluation and justiﬁcation, comes into play relatively

infrequently, when the right course of action is not obvious or when one’s initial moral

response is challenged and there is time to reﬂect. In contrast, most moral actions—the

many unremarkable moral choices and actions that characterize daily life—are not pre-

ceded by conscious reﬂection, but instead are immediate, seemingly intuitive responses.

For example, most people do not have to stop and think before paying a blind newspaper

salesman, rather than only pretending to pay. This kind of routine honesty is taken for

granted. As the name implies, habitual morality is based in repetition over time, not only

behavioral repetition, but also repetition of ingrained habits of “reading” or interpreting

moral situations.

One reason that moral interpretation is so important is that in real life, moral dilem-

mas do not come neatly packaged like hypothetical dilemmas, which typically involve a

given set of simple facts. In contrast, almost any real moral dilemma or question involves

signiﬁcant ambiguity, and interpretation of the situation can differ from one person to

the next. Thus, in order to ﬁnd meaning amid the moral ambiguity of real-life situations,

people must develop habits of moral interpretation and intuition through which they

perceive the everyday world. People with different habits of moral interpretation see the

world in very different terms and are, therefore, presented with very different opportun-

ities and imperatives for moral action. Through the aggregate of their moral choices in

daily life, they actively shape their own moral reality (Walker, 2000).

But even habitual morality has important underlying cognitive elements. Our think-

ing processes rely on our capacity to recognize patterns in the environment, and this

pattern recognition depends on cognitive schemas that derive from many sources. One

source is the set of concepts and assumptions represented by cognitive-moral develop-

ment. Even though it seems clear that people don’t deliberate about or argue through

every moral situation in a way that mirrors the kinds of moral argumentation elicited

in research interviews, different cognitive-moral frameworks (such as Kohlberg’s moral

judgment stages) represent different sets of assumptions that help inform and shape

372 s A. Colby

their reactions to the many small moral decisions of both habitual and reﬂective moral-

ity. In this sense, their conceptual frameworks, including understandings associated with

their developmental stage, provide patterns or schemas that shape moral interpretations.

The way people understand fairness, for example, will be a backdrop to the way they

react to perceived injustices. Concepts such as distributive justice, moral authority, trust,

and accountability are central to morality, and the way they are understood plays an

important part in shaping individuals’ understanding of ambiguous moral situations.

Individuals learn what constitutes a meaningful pattern, in part, through interaction

with their social environment. As they participate in cultural routines, they acquire

habits of interpretation consistent with that culture. The impact of the social context on

habits and schemas is part of the broader issue of socialization of values.

Cognitive schemas can inﬂuence interpretations, judgments, and behavior without

the conscious awareness of the actor, but it is also possible for individuals to reﬂect on

and discuss with others their moral interpretations. These processes can lead to moral

growth. In the many brief moments of moral decision we encounter every day, we have

the capacity to reﬂect, and we have some room to choose the interpretation we settle on,

over time creating new habits of interpretation that can lead in a different direction. This

can involve considering and resolving several conﬂicting interpretations or questioning

one’s original interpretation after confronting an uneasy feeling that one’s interpretation

may be self-serving or biased in other ways. The capacity to override or change one’s

own habits of interpretation is important, because by doing so we can actively shape

our future moral habits. In this view of moral development, people can grow morally

by making an effort to become more aware of their own interpretive habits, acknow-

ledging and trying to overcome their biases, and working to understand and take ser-

iously others’ interpretations (Walker, 2000).

Development of Moral Judgment and Interpretation during College. In part due

to the availability of a measure that is easy to use (James Rest’s Deﬁning Issues Test;

see Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999), moral judgment as conceived by Kohl-

berg has been included in many studies of college student development (Pascarella &

Terenzini, 2005). Investigators have found consistently that attending college increases

students’ scores on this measure, and many studies have found a signiﬁcant correla-

tion between adults’ years of higher education and scores on Kohlberg’s Moral Judg-

ment Interview as well. Moral judgment stage is more likely to stop increasing at the

end of formal education than at any particular age. In fact, some studies have shown

a small negative correlation of DIT scores with age in age-diverse samples of adults

(probably a cohort effect) and a larger positive correlation of DIT with educational

attainment (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).

Given the evidence that higher education contributes to higher levels of moral judg-

ment, it may seem that colleges and universities do not need special programs aimed

speciﬁcally at fostering moral development. However, the research in this area makes

clear that there is signiﬁcant room for improvement. Most college-educated adults do

not achieve the highest level of moral judgment, reasoning instead at Stage 4 or some

combination of Stages 3 and 4 (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs, & Lieberman, 1983). Because a

deep understanding of the American constitution and legal system requires a Stage 5 per-

spective in which the social system is understood to be grounded in fundamental human

rights, the failure of many citizens to achieve that developmental level raises questions

about their capacity to fully appreciate the foundations of American democracy.

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 373

A large body of research makes it clear that the experience of grappling with challeng-

ing moral issues in classroom discussions or in activities that require the resolution of

conﬂicting opinions contributes signiﬁcantly to the increasing maturity of individuals’

moral judgment. This is especially true when the teacher draws attention to important

distinctions, assumptions, and contradictions (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005).

The college experience can also be a powerful opportunity for students to develop more

reﬂective and mature habits of moral interpretation. Students bring their own character-

istic habits of interpretation with them when they enter college, but their experiences in

college have signiﬁcant potential to reshape those habits. Much of the positive impact of

programs that foster understanding across the diversity of a campus and its environment

may reside in the power of those programs to make students aware for the ﬁrst time of

their previously unquestioned interpretive schemes, to bring their biases to light, and to

highlight the inherent ambiguity of moral situations that previously appeared clear-cut.

This view of moral change also clariﬁes the signiﬁcance of the reﬂection component

that is known to be critical to the success of service-learning courses. Reﬂection on

service activities often includes discussions in which students share with each other their

interpretations of the common experience, along with written assignments in which

they explore the ways in which the service experience changed their understanding of

the people with whom they worked, the social issues their work confronted, and their

relationship to those people and issues. This kind of activity is well suited for revealing

alternative interpretations of common experiences and helping students see the personal

signiﬁcance of those alternative interpretations through self-examination (Eyler & Giles,

1999).

Moral Relativism. As students begin to question their unexamined assumptions and

appreciate the multiplicity of interpretations inherent in any situation, they may con-

clude that there are no grounds for evaluating the relative validity of different, sometimes

conﬂicting, moral or intellectual interpretations. At least some degree of both epistemo-

logical and ethical relativism are part of the predictable developmental sequence that

college students go through as they begin to grapple with uncertainty and question the

simple absolutes they previously understood as the “right answers” to complex and subtle

questions. William Perry (1968) and others (e.g., King and Kitchener, 1994; Knefelkamp,

1974) trace a developmental pattern that shifts gradually from seeing the world in polar

terms of right vs. wrong and good vs. bad to a point at which all knowledge and values

are seen as contextual and relative, then eventually to a point at which it is possible to

orient oneself in a relativistic world through the development of commitment, which

is experienced as an ongoing activity through which identity and responsibilities are

afﬁrmed. Empirical studies of college students’ progression through this sequence reveal

that many students move from the initial dualistic stage to the more relativistic positions

during college, but very few reach the most advanced level—the stage of commitment

(Knefelkamp, 1974; Perry, 1968).

In light of consistent ﬁndings that college students tend to leave behind absolutistic

thinking but generally do not reach a full understanding of grounds for intellectual and

moral conviction, it is not surprising that faculty report a great deal of epistemological

and ethical relativism among their students. Although we are not aware of any systematic

research on how widespread moral relativism is among college students (aside from the

studies of Perry’s stages, which do not distinguish between epistemological and ethical

relativism), many faculty and other observers have noted its pervasiveness.

374 s A. Colby

College students’ relativism ought to be cause for concern among educators, because

beliefs such as “everyone is entitled to his own opinion and there is no way to evaluate

the validity of those opinions,” prevent students from engaging fully in discussions of

ethical issues, learning to articulate and effectively justify their views, and adopting new

perspectives when presented with high quality evidence and arguments. In essence, “the

stakes drop out of ethical deliberation” and students are less likely to take it seriously

(Trosset, 1998).

Knowledge. Even intellectually sophisticated reasoning and judgment cannot be

powerful forces for effective action if they are abstract or disembodied. Being deeply

knowledgeable about the issues is also essential. In addition to fostering clearer reason-

ing and more mature judgment, colleges can promote students’ moral and civic learning

by imparting broad and deep knowledge bearing on civic, political, and moral issues.

At a minimum, foundational knowledge in a range of ﬁelds provides support for

moral and civic effectiveness. The need for an understanding of basic philosophic con-

cepts, for example, is evident in the phenomenon of student moral relativism discussed

above. Students often fail to distinguish between a moral principle of respect and tol-

erance and the challenges inherent in evaluating the relative validity of moral claims.

Insofar as these are developmental issues, it may take time for students to work their

way through them. But coursework and classroom discussions focusing directly on these

questions can contribute a great deal to clarifying the intellectual issues involved. And

developmental research indicates that without foundational knowledge of basic political

concepts, it is impossible to understand political stories or assimilate new information

about political issues (Stoker, 2000).

Likewise, students need to develop foundational knowledge of democratic principles,

as well as an understanding of complex social, legal, and political structures and insti-

tutions if they are to be fully prepared as engaged citizens. Research on the context-

speciﬁcity of expertise suggests that programs fostering generic analytic capacities are

not sufﬁcient preparation for effective action. A general grasp of critical thinking and

problem-solving that is not speciﬁc to the ﬁeld in question does not sufﬁce.

MOTIVATION FOR MORAL AND CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY

Like understanding, moral and civic motivation is multi-faceted, and includes values

and goals; identity or sense of self; a sense of efﬁcacy or empowerment; faith; and various

aspects of moral emotion such as hope and optimism, as opposed to alienation and cyni-

cism. Although the connection of higher education with moral and civic motivation may

be less obvious than its connection with knowledge and understanding, colleges have

great potential to contribute to students’ development in this area as well.

Values and Goals. There is a large body of evidence that a college education affects

students’ values, goals, and attitudes. We know that changes in college students’ values

depend partly on characteristics of the college they attend and on students’ entering

characteristics, including gender, religiosity, and their own and their parents’ political

views.

Even so, ever since the 1940s when research on these questions began to emerge,

students in most colleges and universities showed some predictable shifts in their

values, including increased socio-political tolerance, greater concern for civil rights

and civil liberties, more egalitarian views of gender roles, declines in authoritarianism

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 375

and dogmatism, and more secular religious attitudes. Higher education is also asso-

ciated with a modest increase in knowledge of and interest in politics (Pascarella &

Terenzini, 2005). Longitudinal studies indicate that most of these changes in attitudes

and values are maintained in the years after college (e.g., Newcomb, Koenig, Flacks, &

Warwick, 1967).

These changes in values and attitudes, along with documented increases in intellec-

tual dispositions such as interest in and knowledge of cultural and intellectual issues,

tolerance for ambiguity, ﬂexibility of thought, rational and critical approaches to

problem-solving, and receptivity to further learning, are at the heart of American higher

education’s espoused mission. The importance of higher education lies as much in these

outcomes as in subject matter knowledge and vocational preparation.

However, as in the case of moral judgment, there is still immense room for improve-

ment in college students’ moral and civic values. Some of the documented gains, though

statistically signiﬁcant, are small. For example, the impact of higher education on stu-

dents’ social conscience and humanitarian values appears to be very modest (Pascarella,

Smart, & Braxton, 1986; Pascarella, Etherington, & Smart, 1988). In addition, some

positive shifts during college are not maintained in the post-college years. Sax (1999)

reports, for example, that the percentages of students who rate as very important helping

others in need, participating in community action, and inﬂuencing the political struc-

ture show temporary increases over the four years of college, but almost all of these

increases disappear in the ﬁve years after college graduation. Finally, the rates of political

participation among college-educated Americans are higher than among those without a

college education, but only a third of the college-educated follow public affairs regularly

and less than two-thirds vote regularly in both national and local elections. Participation

numbers are signiﬁcantly lower for the youngest cohorts of college graduates (Galston,

2001; Putnam, 2000).

This is not surprising, since most colleges and universities have only a few programs

that speciﬁcally address the moral and civic development of their students, and many

students do not take part in these programs. For those who do take part, the impact can

be dramatic. There is clear evidence that high quality service learning and other peda-

gogies such as political deliberation or political action and research projects, are highly

effective in increasing students’ moral, civic, and political motivation, understanding,

and skills (Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Corngold, 2007; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005;

Youniss, McLellan, & Mazer, 2001).

In his book, Involving Colleges: Successful Approaches to Fostering Student Learning

and Development Outside the Classroom, George Kuh and his colleagues (Kuh, Schuh,

& Whitt, 1991) point to the importance of several features of the campus culture that

inﬂuence students’ moral and civic development. These include the institution’s history,

traditions, language, heroes, sagas, physical setting, and symbols that express unifying

assumptions and democratic values. The establishment and enforcement of policies that

follow from the institution’s core mission and philosophy are also inﬂuential, as is the

make-up of the student body and resulting peer culture. Although the “involving col-

leges” Kuh writes about make it clear that they stand for particular values, they also work

to maintain open dialogue and sensitivity to student concerns. In an in-depth analysis

of 12 colleges and universities that have shown unusual commitment to undergradu-

ate moral and civic education, my colleagues and I saw this same effort to establish a

positive and unifying culture around some core values, balanced with opportunities for

376 s A. Colby

reﬂection on and critique of that culture (Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Stephens, 2003).

The importance of settings, stories, rituals, and other practices that we describe in that

study are clear parallels of the features of campus culture reported by Kuh.

Students’ values and goals can also change through the extra-curricular activities

they seek out, the people they encounter in the course of those activities, and the new

demands that are made on them as a consequence. Among the most important of these

activities for the development of humanitarian social concern and values are leadership

programs (Kuh, 1993; Kuh, Douglas, Lund, & Ramin-Gyurnik, 1994) and community

service (Youniss & Yates, 1997). Both of these are widespread in higher education in

the US.

Moral and Civic Identity. Explanations of the psychological constructs and processes

that mediate the relation between moral judgment and moral action have converged on

the important role of an individual’s sense of moral identity. In this view, moral under-

standing acquires motivational power through its integration into the structures of the

self (Bergman, 2002; Narvaez & Lapsley, 2009). If identity is understood as the core or

essential self, those aspects without which the individual would see himself or herself

to be radically different (Erikson, 1968), it follows that people will be motivated to act

in ways that are consistent with this core self, to maintain consistency in regard to these

essential features of his or her identity. When these essential features of the self include

moral beliefs and convictions, there is strong internal pressure to maintain consistency

with those beliefs. Of course, sometimes people act morally simply in order to avoid neg-

ative consequences. But many people act morally even when sanctions are not involved.

In these cases, they do so, in part, because not to would be a violation of their core self;

to do otherwise would be to betray one’s true self (Bergman, 2002).

Individuals’ understanding and experience of the core self develops over time, and the

integration of moral convictions into one’s core sense of self is one of the most important

features of moral development. Damon and Hart (1988) traced the development of

self-understanding from childhood through adolescence, ﬁnding that younger children

tended to focus on physical characteristics, skills, and interests when asked to deﬁne and

describe who they are. Study participants did not begin to include moral qualities such

as honesty or loyalty in their self-deﬁnitions until they reached adolescence.

Despite these predictable developmental patterns, both adolescents and adults vary

in the degree to which morality is central to their sense of self and in the content of

that morality. In “The Moral Self,” John Dewey (1998) wrote, “The real moral question

is what kind of self is being furthered or formed” (p. 346). This question is central in

studies of moral and civic commitment. Daniel Hart and Suzanne Fegley (1995), for

example, found that in highly altruistic adolescents, moral concerns were more likely

to be central to their current sense of self and their ideal self than in adolescents from a

comparison group of normal but not especially altruistic adolescents. Similarly, Colby

and Damon (1992) found that a close integration of self and morality formed the basis

for the unwavering commitment to the common good exhibited by moral exemplars

who had dedicated themselves for decades to ﬁghting against poverty or for peace, civil

rights, and other aspects of social justice.

Others have written about the development of political or civic identity in a way that

parallels this conception of moral identity (e.g., Flanagan & Sherrod, 1998; Verba, Schloz-

man, & Brady, 1995; Youniss & Yates, 1997). For example, Youniss and Yates present data

showing that the long-term impact of youth service experience on later political and

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 377

community involvement can best be explained by the contribution these service experi-

ences make to the creation of an enduring sense of oneself as a politically engaged and

socially concerned person. In their view, civic identity—which entails the establishment

of individual and collective senses of social agency, responsibility for society, and politi-

cal-moral awareness—links certain kinds of social participation during adolescence and

young adulthood with civic engagement by these same people later.

This question of the development of a civic or political identity may help explain

why some changes that take place during the college years last well beyond college

while others do not. McAdam (1988) studied adults who as college students had spent

a summer taking part in the 1964 Freedom Rides, which sought to integrate interstate

bus lines in the south during the Civil Rights Movement. This powerful and danger-

ous experience had a long-term impact on those who took part, and they followed

quite different life trajectories than others who had volunteered to participate but

were unable to join the group in the end. The follow-up data showed that the Freedom

Riders’ lives were permanently altered by the experience, and many went on to be

leaders in community organizing for social justice, the movement against the Viet

Nam War, the women’s movement, and other efforts to promote social change. The

Freedom Ride experience had changed their understanding, beliefs, and values in a

number of ways, and also seems to have changed the way they understand their own

identities. McAdam explains one aspect of the difference between participants and the

comparison group this way: “Having deﬁned themselves as activists, a good many of

the Mississippi veterans had a strong need to conﬁrm that identity through [further]

action” (p. 187).

Identity is one of a number of psychological mechanisms through which culture can

have a long-term impact on an individual’s behavior. The stories, images, and routines

that constitute the cultural context can be incorporated into the participating individuals’

sense of self, thus becoming a stable aspect of their orientations to themselves, other

people, and the world (Newman, 1996). This can work for good or ill, depending on the

cultural messages that are internalized. On some of the campuses my colleagues and I

highlighted in our book, Educating Citizens (2003), members of the campus community

were aware of the positive potential of this phenomenon. For example, at the College of

St. Catherine (a Catholic women’s college), stories of the courage and resourcefulness

of the founding nuns were common knowledge for all students and were understood

to mean that “We here at St. Kate’s are women of unusual strength and moral courage.”

Educators at the college hoped and expected that graduates would take with them a sense

of self that includes these virtues, and our study showed evidence that many students

had internalized the iconic founding narrative of the college.

What are the implications of this work for moral and civic education? We know that

identity development takes place in part through identiﬁcation with admired others

(Bandura, 1977, 1986). Hazel Markus (Markus & Nurius, 1986) has described the inter-

play between people’s actual and possible selves, which can include both the selves they

hope to become and the selves they are afraid of becoming. Markus and Nurius (1986)

argue that the self-construct is not singular but “a system of affective-cognitive struc-

tures (also called theories or schemas) about the self that lends structure and coherence

to the individual’s experiences” (p. 955). They present data suggesting that individuals

can reﬂect on their possible selves, and they understand development as a process of

acquiring and then either achieving or resisting certain possible selves.

378 s A. Colby

Experience with people who provide either positive or negative models can contribute

to the construction of possible selves and eventually to the individual’s actual self. Expo-

sure to faculty members, residence life mentors, members of the community, and other

students who represent an inspiring vision of personal ideals can play an important role

in fostering the incorporation of moral and civic values into students’ sense of who they

want to be and eventually who they feel they are. Likewise, awareness of why they do not

want to emulate some others with whom they have contact can provide a motivating

force through avoidance of a feared possible self.

Undergraduate programs that adopt an outcomes-based approach often include self-

understanding and self-reﬂection among their goals, asking students to think about

questions like “What kind of self should I aspire to be?” as well as the perennial college

student question, “Who am I?” If reﬂections on questions like these are to have lasting

impact on students’ sense of self, they must be of more than theoretical or academic

interest. This can happen best when the questions are asked in the context of engagement

with complex moral pursuits such as those provided by high quality service-learning,

when students are engaged in this work with people who represent inspiring models

with whom they can identify, and when the campus culture supports the development

of habitual moral schemes that are consistent with important moral values. Both aca-

demic and co-curricular activities can contribute to students’ awareness of and reﬂec-

tion on what is important to them and to their sense that they can play an active role

in determining what kind of people they become (Colby et al., 2003; Colby, Ehrlich,

Sullivan, & Dolle, 2011). Pedagogies of active engagement can be especially powerful in

linking intellectual work in higher education to its signiﬁcance for what kind of person

the student wants to be.

Political Efﬁcacy and Moral and Civic Emotions. Colleges and universities can also

help foster students’ sense of efﬁcacy. In order to be civically and politically engaged

and active, people have to care about the issues and value this kind of contribution. But

socially responsible values alone are not sufﬁcient to motivate action. People also have to

believe that it matters what they think and do civically and politically and that it is pos-

sible for them to make some kind of difference. This belief is what we mean by having a

sense of political efﬁcacy.

Social scientists agree that a sense of political efﬁcacy is critically important in support-

ing political action. But having a strong sense of efﬁcacy does not mean one believes that

political action will necessarily have an impact. In fact, people who are highly engaged

may not even ask that question. As former Czechoslovakian president and author Vaclav

Havel said:

When a person behaves in keeping with his conscience, when he tries to speak the

truth and when he tries to behave as a citizen even under conditions where citizen-

ship is degraded, it may not lead to anything, yet it might. But what surely will not

lead to anything is when a person calculates whether it will lead to something or

not.

(as quoted in Meadows, 1991, p. 48)

Likewise, studies of people who have dedicated their lives to serving others and improv-

ing their communities have found that these extraordinary individuals rarely asked

themselves whether they were making measurable progress toward their goals (Colby &

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 379

Damon, 1992). Especially when working to ﬁght poverty, as many were, they would

have become discouraged if they had focused on the question of how much progress

they were making in relation to the magnitude of the remaining problem.

Others have suggested that promoting students’ political interest also requires impart-

ing a sense of passion and even playfulness about politics. Political scientist Wendy Rahn

(2000) argues that what students really need to learn about politics is “a love of the game

and a sense of sportsmanship.” If they do that, the question of whether they are making

a difference with each speciﬁc act is less central. And yet, fostering this love of the game,

which pushes the question of efﬁcacy into the background, is one of the most effective

ways to foster a sense of political efﬁcacy.

When one takes on great moral and political causes such as poverty or political reform,

immersion in the process of collective action can preserve one’s spirits and determina-

tion. Thus, a love of the activity for its own sake, passion for the cause, and solidarity

with others working toward the same goals can all sustain moral and civic commitment

in the face of difﬁculties that would otherwise be very discouraging. An important ques-

tion for educators, then, is how to help students achieve this kind of satisfaction in their

moral, political, and civic discussions and action (Colby et al., 2007).

Moral emotions play an important role in motivating action (Haidt, 2001; Hoffman,

1981), and many programs of moral and civic education include efforts to elicit some

kind of moral emotion, either negative or positive—outrage at injustice, disgust with

hypocrisy, compassion for the poor, hope for peace, and inspiration through solidarity.

Research indicates that the motivational impact of negative and positive emotions can be

quite different. It is important to be aware of this, because many educators rely heavily

on eliciting negative emotions as a means to rouse students from self-absorption. Out

of concern for social justice, faculty often take a critical stance toward American history,

culture, and politics. The goal is to shock students out of their complacency and motivate

them to act through a sense of outrage. The irony is that in many cases, this critical

approach, instead of solving the apathy problem, contributes to the growing sense of

alienation and cynicism that students feel, and ﬁnally to a lack of conviction that any-

thing can be done about the injustice, which seems so pervasive as to be unavoidable.

The belief that corruption, exploitation, and greed are rampant (and perhaps even part

of the human condition) can be used to justify a life of self-interest as well as a life of civic

commitment.

A study of political advertising helps to illuminate this phenomenon. This experi-

mental study (Rahn & Hirshorn, 1999) looked at the effect of arousing positive or neg-

ative feelings about the state of the country and found that both positive and negative

feelings can lead to more involvement in community and political action. That is, feeling

either more outraged or more inspired and hopeful can lead to more engagement. But

the investigators also found an interaction between emotion and sense of efﬁcacy. In this

study, positive emotions (hopefulness or inspiration) led to greater interest and engage-

ment among study participants who began with either a low or a high sense of political

efﬁcacy. In contrast, negative feelings like outrage mobilize those who begin with high

efﬁcacy, but demobilize even more those who start with low levels of efﬁcacy.

It is likely that the teachers who create a sense of outrage by focusing very heavily on

abuses and injustice have higher political efﬁcacy than their students, so it makes sense

that the teachers would feel mobilized by vivid critiques of the status quo and would

expect students to be mobilized as well. But students who begin with low levels of

380 s A. Colby

efﬁcacy may be immobilized by the apparent hopelessness of the situation. An emerg-

ing understanding of this dynamic is contributing to a growing consensus that the

most effective approach to civic engagement combines an appreciation of the ideals

of one’s own democratic system—that democratic ideals are unrealized but not unre-

alizable—with a realistic sense of where one’s country has fallen short of the ideals

(Damon, 2011; Gutmann, 1987; Rahn, 1992). This approach avoids both cynicism

and naive, uncritical complacency. In practice, this is difﬁcult to achieve. But teachers

at all levels need to ask themselves which is the greater challenge (and thus worth the

greatest attention and effort)—to make students more realistic or to make than more

idealistic (Gutmann, 1987).

CIVIC AND POLITICAL SKILLS OR EXPERTISE

We have said that if we are to educate engaged citizens it is important for students to

have a sense of political efﬁcacy. But what about actually being efﬁcacious as well as

feeling efﬁcacious? In addition to understanding and caring about justice, people need

to develop the skills and expertise of civic and political practice if they are to be engaged

and effective citizens.

Prominent among the needed civic and political capacities are skills of delibera-

tion, communication, and persuasion, including the capacities for compelling moral

discourse—how to make a strong case for something, ensure that others understand

one’s point of view, understand and evaluate others’ arguments, compromise without

abandoning one’s convictions, and work toward consensus (Colby et al., 2007). These

capacities go to the heart of moral and civic functioning, because individuals’ moral and

political concepts are both developed and applied through discourse, communication,

and argumentation. Individuals take positions in the context of social interactions or

discourse, which helps to shape the way those positions are played out, modiﬁed, and

reconstructed (Habermas, 1993; Turiel, 1997).

Having these political and civic competencies not only makes effective action possible, it

naturally leads to a greater sense of efﬁcacy or empowerment, and leads people to see them-

selves as politically engaged and thus to be further motivated toward engagement (Colby

et al., 2007; Lake, Snell, Perry & Associates, 2002). That is, the development of skills con-

tributes to and interacts with the development of values, understanding, and self-concept.

Kuh and colleagues (1991) report, for example, that participation in leadership activities

during college is the single most important predictor of students’ development of human-

itarian social concern and values. The signiﬁcance of developing these practical compe-

tencies is also evident in longitudinal research on civic engagement. In a comprehensive

review, Kirlin (2000) found that involvement with organizations that teach adolescents how

to participate in society by learning how to form and express opinions and organize people

for action is a powerful predictor of adult civic engagement.

GENERAL ARCHITECTURE OF COLLEGE LEVEL MORAL AND CIVIC

EDUCATION

There are three main sites of moral and civic education in colleges and universities,

and all are important: the curriculum, including both general education and the

major; extra-curricular activities and programs; and the campus culture, including

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 381

honor codes, residence hall life, and spontaneous “teachable moments,” as well as

various cultural routines and practices—symbols, rituals, socialization practices,

shared stories, and the like. Some of the most effective programs integrate learning

from at least two of the sites—usually curricular and extra-curricular—and some-

times all three. Institutions that make undergraduate moral and civic education a

high priority use a holistic approach in which moral and civic learning takes place in

all three major sites and is well aligned and dynamically interconnected across sites

(Colby et al., 2003).

The Curriculum

In curricular programs that make moral and civic learning a serious priority, courses

intended to serve that purpose are evaluated and screened to ensure that they meet

clearly established criteria of focus and quality. When colleges and universities are com-

mitted to reaching all or most of their students, they build moral and civic goals into

required core courses and into majors in both arts and sciences and vocational ﬁelds

rather than limiting them to electives that will be chosen only by students who already

show a strong interest in ethical concerns or social responsibility. In addition, these insti-

tutions encourage faculty to employ a wide array of active pedagogies and provide train-

ing and other support in the use of these pedagogies.

Moral and Civic Learning beyond the Classroom

Moral and civic learning beyond the classroom includes both structured extra-curricular

programs and activities and many aspects of the environment or culture. Leadership

programs, service activities, disciplinary, religious, and political clubs, and programs

designed to foster communication and respect across diversity are directly relevant to

students’ moral and civic growth, but moral and civic learning can be incorporated into

virtually any kind of student activity with sensitive guidance and support from faculty

and staff advisors.

The campus culture is another important site of moral and civic learning. The culture

of any given campus conveys many, often conﬂicting, messages, however, only some

of which support the values the institution wishes to convey. Only by talking directly

with students is it possible to identify which of the institution’s physical symbols, iconic

stories, socialization practices, and widely shared key ideas are salient to them and how

they understand the meaning of these cultural practices and artifacts. Institutions that

have a vibrant tradition of social contribution, a rich set of public events that explore

social and political issues, or a faculty that is especially engaged with the local or national

community often highlight and build on these strengths to students’ great beneﬁt (Colby

et al., 2003).

Within the realm of institutional culture, honor codes are important ways to highlight

some of the central values of higher education—honesty, trust, self-restraint, civility,

and mutual respect. Research indicates that when honor codes make explicit the links

between honorable student behavior and responsible citizenship within the campus and

broader communities, enjoy faculty support, involve students in their development and

implementation, are enforced fairly and consistently, and are accompanied by discus-

sions of their meaning and rationale, they are highly effective in reducing cheating and

fostering a strong sense of intellectual integrity and moral community (Bok, 1990; Cole

& Conklin, 1996; McCabe, Treviño, & Butterﬁeld, 1999).

382 s A. Colby

URGENT AGENDA UNDER THREAT

Since the publication of the ﬁrst edition of this volume in 2008, the traditional pur-

poses of higher education, including cultivation of a life of the mind and the shaping of

character, have come under increasing attack (Selingo, 2012; Tugend, 2012). Due mostly

to the high cost of college and rising student debt, the pressure for accountability has

intensiﬁed, and accountability criteria for what is often called the “education industry”

are more likely to be framed in terms of graduates’ raw earning power (Mitchell Stevens,

2012). The popularity of vocational majors continues to rise, swamping arts and sciences

majors, especially the humanities. Business is by far the largest undergraduate major in

the US, and more than two-thirds of US college students choose to major in vocational

ﬁelds. Unless faculty and administrative leaders bring to higher education renewed com-

mitment to its formative capacities and creativity in weaving moral and civic learning

into every ﬁeld of study, the growing trends toward efﬁciency, economic conceptions

of accountability, and narrowly deﬁned vocational preparation at the expense of other

goals are likely to weaken higher education’s capacity to prepare thoughtful, engaged

citizens and persons of integrity and moral wisdom.

Studies show that, at the end of college, students who majored in business or engi-

neering rate as signiﬁcantly lower than other students the importance of developing a

meaningful philosophy of life, inﬂuencing the political structure, improving their under-

standing of other countries and cultures, and related outcomes. Correspondingly, stu-

dents in these majors rate more highly the importance of being very well off ﬁnancially.

Students in vocational majors tend to be more instrumental in their orientation toward

learning—asking how each experience will help them get a job—and less interested in

thinking about problems from many fundamentally different points of view (Colby et

al., 2011).

On the other side of the gulf between vocational and arts and sciences education,

the humanities report feeling under assault and are struggling to attract students. Their

efforts to increase “rigor” and theoretical grounding for their scholarship often make

their ﬁelds seem more esoteric and disconnected from the world of non-academic work

(Kronman, 2007). Yet the humanities traditionally have been fertile grounds for foster-

ing a wider sense of meaning, reﬂective exploration, the capacity to imagine alternative

life paths that are driven by different sets of values, and the means to make thoughtful

choices among those alternative paths. Serious attention to moral and civic learning in

college can, therefore, beneﬁt from drawing on the substance and modes of thought

represented by the humanities, incorporating these perspectives into whatever ﬁelds of

study undergraduates choose to pursue.

Although the increasing share of students pursuing vocational majors is, in some

ways, a barrier to the widespread adoption of moral and civic learning as serious goals of

higher education, this need not be the case. Preparing students for a profession or other

vocational ﬁeld presents many opportunities for teaching about the broader historical,

social, cultural, and institutional contexts of that work, its potential impact on society,

and the responsibilities of practitioners to consider those impacts and make them as

constructive as possible. My colleagues and I have offered some suggestions for accom-

plishing this in several ﬁelds based on research we conducted at the Carnegie Foundation

for the Advancement of Teaching (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009; Colby et al.,

2011; Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2008).

Moral and Civic Development of College Students s 383

On a more optimistic note, it seems that faculty interest in active pedagogies has

increased (Stanton, Giles, & Cruz, 1999), and many of these pedagogies hold strong

potential for inﬂuencing not only students’ moral and civic understanding but also

their motivation and skill. However, engaged pedagogies will contribute to the full

range of moral and civic outcomes only if they are designed explicitly to do so (Colby

et al., 2007, 2011). Well designed team projects, for example, can teach civic capacities

such as collaboration, compromise, persuasion, and sense of responsibility beyond

the self. And the more explicitly these goals are built into the demands of the assign-

ment, the more likely students are to achieve the desired outcomes. Similarly, if the

project’s substance invites consideration of political and policy questions or questions

of ethical standards and choices, it will likely contribute to moral and civic learning. If

not, the learning may be limited to technical or narrowly academic dimensions of the

issues at hand.

Given the serious economic, political, social, and environmental challenges facing the

world in the twenty-ﬁrst century, this is no time to push moral and civic formation to

the margins of higher education. Advanced knowledge and technical skill are urgently

needed. But if students don’t also learn how to wield that knowledge and skill respons-

ibly, they will be unable to meet the great challenges of their times. Higher education

is in a strong position to enable students to make sense of the world and their place

in it, to prepare them to use knowledge and skills to engage responsibly with the life

of their times. In order for it to meet this potential, all of the major sites of moral and

civic learning—the curriculum, student life outside the classroom, and the institutional

culture—need to be integrated intentionally toward the development of moral and civic

understanding, motivation, and skill.

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386

CITIZENSHIP AND DEMOCRACY EDUCATION IN A

DIVERSE EUROPE

Wolfgang Edelstein and Tobias Krettenauer

THE CALL FOR DEMOCRACY EDUCATION IN EUROPE

In the year 2007, the European Union, in the understanding laid down in the so

called Lisbon Accords, deﬁned democratic citizenship and human rights, together

with social cohesion and sustainable economic progress, as fundamental goals of the

Union. These goals were to serve as a cornerstone of its ongoing and future develop-

ment as one of the most advanced regions of the world. Ten years earlier, in 1997, the

Council of Europe, the agency of political and cultural cooperation of more than 40

European nations, launched a program of citizenship and human rights education

designed to support and evolve democratic citizenship education in schools across

Europe. Starting with the study of exemplary projects and schools, it continued from

2002 onwards with a program of education for democratic citizenship developing

local, national, and transnational initiatives, curricula, and standards, and publish-

ing handbooks and teaching materials (Bîrzéa et al., 2004; Dürr, Ferreira Martins, &

Spajic Vrkas, 2001). The program reached a new level of intensity with its European

Year of Citizenship through Education in 2005. In the wake of this programmatic high

point a new phase of the program was launched in 2006 under the heading Learn-

ing and Living Democracy for All. A center for democratic education, the European

Wergeland Center, was established in Oslo with support of the Norwegian govern-

ment to organize and coordinate European action in the ﬁeld of democracy education

and school-based action for democratic development. In May 2005, the heads of state

and governments in Europe agreed upon action according to the so called Warsaw

Action Plan to implement the following three lines of action: (1) Education policy

development and implementation for democratic citizenship and social inclusion; (2)

Democratic governance of educational institutions; (3) New roles and competencies

of teachers and other educational staff in a common program enterprise of Education

for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (EDC/HRE).

Democracy Education in Europe s 387

Finally, in 2010, the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education of the Council of

Europe debated and decided on the main goals and objectives of the EDC/HRE program

for the coming years, strengthening policy development and policy implementation with

special focus on social cohesion, social inclusion, and respect for human rights; with

special attention to democratic governance of educational institutions. They called for

a special effort to disseminate knowledge and best practice and to foster research in the

ﬁeld to establish a satisfactory knowledge base. and, ﬁnally and most importantly, to

develop sustainable frameworks and mechanisms that make EDC/HRE part of everyday

practices and processes at all levels of society. In May 2010 the Committee of Minis-

ters adopted a Council of Europe Charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and

Human Rights Education that sums up the history of the endeavor. This document pro-

vides a serious and substantive set of deﬁnitions, objectives, and principles as well as

detailed policy measures, which are aptly summed up by Section 13 of the Charter under

the heading Skills for promoting social cohesion, valuing diversity and handling differences

and conﬂict.

In all areas of education, member states should promote educational approaches

and teaching methods which aim at living together in a democratic and multicul-

tural society and at enabling learners to acquire the knowledge and skills to promote

cohesion, value diversity and equality, appreciate differences—particularly between

different faith and ethnic groups—and settle disagreements and conﬂicts in a non-

violent manner with respect for each others’ rights, as well as to combat all forms of

discrimination and violence, especially bullying and harassment.

(Council of Europe, 2010, p. 12)

Evidently, education for democratic citizenship has rapidly moved up in the policy

agendas of national and supranational organizations in Europe over the past two

decades and is now considered a top priority in many of the European Ministries of

education (see also Georgi, 2008; Kerr, 2008). There are plenty of reasons for this

increased emphasis on democratic citizenship education. Some of them are global in

nature; others are speciﬁc to Europe. For a long time, social scientists have been issuing

warnings about a decrease in political and civic engagement in particular among youth.

Renowned political scientists such as Herfried Münkler in Germany (Münkler &

Wassermann, 2008) and Colin Crouch in the UK (Crouch, 2004) have identiﬁed serious

threats to the very foundation of modern democracies that are manifest in an erosion

of trust in political institutions. These long-term threats more or less affect all Western

societies and are hardly speciﬁc to Europe. They have been associated with excessive

utilitarian individualism (Durkheim, 1898/1969), which is corrosive of any social bonds

beyond economic self-interest, as well as with globalization, which confronts demo-

cratically legitimized national institutions with unprecedented challenges on the level

of international governance. After the end of the cold war and the fall of the Soviet

Regime, Europe had to manage the integration of former communist countries from

Central and Eastern Europe into the Union and ﬁnd appropriate ways to support their

ﬂedgling democratic institutions. Although the European Union fared reasonably well

in this process (as recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize committee in 2012) many coun-

tries faced economic challenges and declines in social-welfare systems that were further

exacerbated in the wake of the ﬁnancial crisis in 2008. As a consequence, even

388 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

well-established democracies in Western Europe with long-standing traditions of

democratic governance have experienced an upsurge of right-wing, xenophobic, and

nationalistic movements that threaten immigrants living in these countries and ques-

tion the process of European integration itself.

All these trends make obvious that a democratically uniﬁed Europe which promotes

social cohesion, respect for human rights, value diversity, and the peaceful cohabitation

of different faith and ethnic groups (as deﬁned in the Lisbon Accords and the Charter

of the European Council) cannot be taken for granted but has to be actively promoted

and cultivated. Once achieved, democratic forms of governance are not self-sustaining

and have to be constantly reinforced. Thus, education for democratic citizenship is no

luxury. It is a necessity. This insight led to the strong emphasis in the European Union on

Education for Democratic Citizenship. The question then arises, how shall we go about

when organizing education for democracy? What are the competencies children and

adolescents need to develop for engaging in democratic governance at local, provincial,

national, and supranational levels? What are the operational characteristics of the cor-

responding learning environments? And what are the challenges and barriers for demo-

cracy education that thwart the education for democratic citizenship in a uniﬁed and

diverse Europe? These are the main questions addressed in this chapter. In the following,

we will ﬁrst deal with the importance of schools for democracy education. This focus on

schools will be maintained throughout the chapter. This is not to deny the importance

of other social institutions for promoting democratic forms of life (e.g., the family, youth

organizations). However, schools are in a particularly privileged position for teaching

democracy as will become evident in the following section. This privilege deﬁnes an

important institutional responsibility. In the subsequent sections, after describing key

competencies that can be considered essential for participating in democratic forms of

life, we will turn to important principles and practices that are suitable for promot-

ing democratic competencies in schools. Finally, we will outline major challenges that

Education for Democracy in Europe has been facing in the past and likely will face in the

future.

EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY—THE IMPORTANCE OF SCHOOLS

At the beginning of this chapter major initiatives of the Council of Europe and the

European Commission regarding EDC/HRE were described. Starting in the late 1990s,

these political and administrative initiatives were paralleled by increasing efforts to gain

empirically based knowledge on civic education in European countries. An important

milestone in this development was the IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED99)—a two-

phase, cross-national study that involved 90,000 14-year-olds from 28 countries, 24 of

which were European. This study, on different levels and by various indicators, docu-

mented the particular importance of schools for the process of democracy education.

It demonstrated that civic knowledge was the strongest predictor of students’ intention

to vote as adults. Schools have an important role in democracy education by teaching

about political institutions and the processes of democratic decision-making. Tradition-

ally, this has been the prevailing form of citizenship education in the past (Torney-Purta,

Lehmann, Oswalk, & Schulz, 2001). Although civic knowledge is necessary for demo-

cratic citizenship it is far from being sufﬁcient. In the CIVED99 Study only one out of

ﬁve students indicated that they intend to participate in conventional political activities

Democracy Education in Europe s 389

(such as writing a letter to a newspaper) apart from voting. In most countries, young

people appeared to be only moderately interested in political issues. Thus, active citizen-

ship turned out to be a rare outcome of traditional citizenship education. Those schools

that modeled democratic values and practices through encouraging students to discuss

issues in the classroom and to take an active role in the school life were more successful

in this regard. An open classroom climate and participatory school culture was found to

be a positive predictor of students’ civic knowledge and political engagement in almost

all countries (cf. Torney-Purta et al., 2001). However, for many students this experience

was not the norm. Only about one third of the participants in the CIVED99 study agreed

that they were often encouraged in their schools to make up their own minds or encour-

aged to express opinions that differ from those of other students and of the teacher.

Thus, even though a democratic school culture was found to be a positive predictor of

two main pillars of democratic citizenship (civic knowledge and engagement) only a

minority of students were able to beneﬁt from this experience. From this perspective, the

CIVED99 study pointed at an enormous untapped potential of schools for contributing

to democracy education.

Schools need to teach students civic knowledge and critical thinking abilities. They

often do so, more or less effectively (cf. Torney-Purta et al., 2001). However, their poten-

tial contribution to democracy education is far greater. Schools are typically the ﬁrst

public institution children enter in their lives. It is in the school that students experi-

ence ﬁrst-hand what it means to live and work in a public institution that has a certain

mandate and that is governed by formal rules and role obligations. Second, schools

provide a common denominator in children’s and adolescents lives. Even if students may

have little in common because of increasingly diverse ethnic, cultural, and family back-

grounds, they share their school experience. This experience provides a common ground

for meaningful cooperation and conﬂict resolution. Finally, schools are always part of a

larger community, as they bring together children and their parents, teachers and school

staff, administrators and community members. Schools are not isolated from society.

Any initiative that starts on the level of schools has the potential to reach out to the com-

munity and to impact society.

As schools are public institutions that are designed for the sake of students’ learning,

they are in the privileged position of teaching democracy in three different yet intercon-

nected ways. In schools students are able to (a) learn about democracy in order to become a

knowing and conscious democratic actor in (future) situations of social and political choice

and decision (Rawls, 1971); they can (b) learn through democracy by the experience of

participation in a democratic school community, and thus, through experience, to acquire

sustainable democratic habits (Dewey, 1963, 2004); and they can (c) learn for democracy by

developing democratic forms of life that reach out to local, national, or even transnational

contexts (Himmelmann, 2007). Evidently, learning through and for democracy cannot be

achieved simply by adding another school subject to the curriculum. It is the serious busi-

ness of learning for a life of social solidarity (called social cohesion in the Charter on Educa-

tion for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education). What it aims for is a habitus

of peaceful cohabitation, of diversity and participation, in a co-constructive model of social

regulation. This is not an isolated skill that can be trained in a time-limited program. It is

a cognitive, affective, and behavioral disposition that involves the person as a whole. Thus,

learning for democracy requires fostering competencies that are key for participating in

democratic forms of life. What are these competencies?

390 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

KEY COMPETENCIES FOR PARTICIPATING IN DEMOCRATIC FORMS OF

SOCIAL LIFE

At this point it is useful to direct our attention to another voice claiming education for

democracy in Europe and beyond, the OECD. Parallel to the Lisbon process and the

Council of Europe’s policy generating the EDC/HRE program, the OECD’s group of

educational experts developed their concept of key competencies for a successful life and a

well-functioning society (Rychen & Salganik, 2003), to become the basic orientation for

the OECD’s educational policies and performance evaluations (known as the Program

of Student Assessment or PISA) across the OECD’s member states. These key competen-

cies enable individuals to respond to complex situations and challenges, to navigate in

a heterogeneous social space, to deal with differences and contradictions, and to take

responsibility for themselves as well as others (Rychen & Salganik, 2001, 2003; Weinert,

2001). Thus they represent promising tools or instrumental capabilities that enable indi-

viduals to act according to the norms, and in view of the goals deﬁned by the Council of

Europe’s Charter: the norms of democracy and human rights. The OECD deﬁned three

key competencies that are taken to be instrumental for these goals:

1. The ability to interact in socially heterogeneous groups—with integration,

networking, partnerships, solidarity, and cooperation the operational constructs

most frequently used to deﬁne the concrete meaning attached to the process.

The ability to interact in socially heterogeneous groups implies the ability to

relate to others, to cooperate, and to manage and resolve conﬂict. It is thus a

basic operational capability for action and interaction in a democratic process

and for a democratically structured social world.

2. The second key competence for a successful life and a well-functioning society

deﬁned by the OECD working group is the ability to act autonomously. This

implies that individuals are empowered to navigate in the social space and to

manage their lives in meaningful and responsible ways to experience self-efﬁ-

cacy and exercise control over their living and working conditions (Rychen &

Salganik, 2003, p. 91). It calls for the ability “to play an active, reﬂective and

responsible part in any given context” (p. 91). It implies the individual’s ability

to act within the big picture, that is: to think globally and act locally (p. 92), to

understand the role one plays as well as the roles played by others. And this

again means understanding “the rules of the game,” the social norms and moral

rules that relate to the context of action.

3. The third key competence is the ability to use tools interactively—the more con-

ventional identiﬁcation of abilities and skills acquired in the course of educa-

tion-for-competence processes, yet stressing their interactive use beyond the

tradition: using language, symbols, and texts; information and information

technologies interactively and cooperatively.

It is important to note that the three key competences described by the OECD, the

ability to interact in socially heterogenous groups, the ability to act autonomously, and

the ability to use tools interactively were not initially deﬁned as democratic

competencies but as competencies individuals need for leading a successful life in a

well-functioning society. At the center of these competencies is the ability of individuals

Democracy Education in Europe s 391

to think independently as an expression of moral and intellectual maturity and to take

responsibility for their own learning and their actions. However, as these competencies

stress the cooperative and interactive nature of problem-solving they can be easily

translated into key competencies for democratic citizenship. The three competences

that are key for leading a successful life are equally important for engaging in core

democratic activities of deliberation, cooperation, and participation. Students need to

learn to deliberate about different viewpoints, norms, ideas, and goals by listening to

their counterparts in discussions. They need to deal constructively with diversity and

difference and need to be able to solve conﬂicts in a cooperative and fair way. Finally,

they need to be motivated to contribute to processes of democratic decision-making

and to seek out meaningful opportunities of political participation. All this requires

conceptual, interpretative, and procedural knowledge tools for acting democratically,

that is a profound understanding of the various requirements of democratic problem-

solving in different social contexts and situations.

The overall message of the OECD deﬁnition and selection of key competencies, thus,

appears to be a call for a psychologically grounded and socially validated competence

orientation towards achieving the goal of democracy. These competencies provide the

foundation for cognitive-affective dispositions and skills that are necessary for engaging

in democratic forms of life. Without these social competencies there will be no delibera-

tion, no cooperation, and no participation as core democratic activities. The question

therefore must be: How can schools organize the learning processes required to develop

these competencies?

In a variety of ways all relevant skills, practices, and learning processes are experi-

entially linked in learning communities that are embedded in a participatory school

culture. Piaget described these processes as early as 1934 in his disquisition on “self-

government” of children in the schools (Piaget 1934/1998). In his footsteps, Lawrence

Kohlberg developed his concept of schools as Just Communities. Here, in a “scaffolding

environment” (Vygotski), under “responsive conditions” (“entgegenkommende Verhält-

nisse,” Habermas), children will encounter “the existential and social experience” that

according to John Dewey (1963) grounds a democratic form of life. First of all, this

existential experience is the recognition and appreciation experienced by children and

adolescents in participation processes. Self-efﬁcacy (Bandura, 1994) follows logically

and psychologically from the experience of being accepted, recognized, and appreciated.

Responsibility (for tasks as well as for persons) follows from shared social action towards

a common goal. The triple quality: recognition by others, self-efﬁcacy, and responsibility

thus is grounded in the participatory processes on which a democratic school culture is

based. But none of these capabilities (Amartya Sen’s term for the competencies unfolding

in social action and interaction; Sen, 1993) will develop, unless the school community

provides concrete organizational arrangements for the activation of democratic citizen-

ship practices and the social competencies that an activating school environment will

typically both rely on and bring about. These include taking the perspective of the other

(Selman, 1980) and engaging in discursive practices (Habermas, 1983; Piaget, 1932,

1934/1998). In order to achieve this goal, schools must work towards turning formal

membership in the institution into active and motivated participation in a community.

A collectively shared sense of recognition and responsibility arising from the experi-

ence of belonging to a community of purpose will transform the closely regulated life

of an educational institution into a democratic school culture characterized by reciprocal

392 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

recognition, by the self-efﬁcacy of motivated actors, and by the shared responsibility of

cooperating members—the principles guiding participation in school as a moral com-

munity (Althof & Stadelmann, 2009; Kohlberg, 1986).

IDEAS INTO ACTION—SCHOOL PRACTICES FOR PROMOTING

DEMOCRATIC COMPETENCIES

There is a broad range of practices that can contribute to the development of the socio-

moral resources and capabilities required for the growth of a democratic school culture.

Such practices, to be effective, will combine efforts and methodologies conducive to

learning about democracy, to learning through democracy, and to learning for demo-

cracy. They will construct, in the classroom and across classrooms, the framework for

Dewey’s “existential and social experience” that is basic to developing democratic skills

and habits. Following Frank and Huddleston (2009), the opportunities for active experi-

ence of democracy in schools can be grouped into three broad categories according to

the communal experience they provide. There is (a) the community of the classroom,

(b) the community of the school as a whole, and (c) the wider community of which the

school is a part. These three communal spaces deﬁne the “social ecology” of democracy

learning in schools, similar to what Bronfenbrenner (1979) described as the ecology of

human development. That is, the developing person is embedded in several overlapping

environmental systems that range from the immediate setting of the classroom to the

more remote context of the political culture in a given society. Each system interacts with

all others and with the individual to inﬂuence the development of democratic compe-

tencies. Thus, what happens on the level of classrooms has ramiﬁcations for the school

community. Creating a democratic school culture, in turn, impacts the culture in the

classroom as well as the wider community. Correspondingly, practices designed to foster

democratic citizenship in schools can be located on three different levels. They may focus

(a) on classroom activities, (b) cut across classrooms and involve the school community

as a whole, or they may (c) reach out to the wider community of which the school is a

part. Ideally, democratic practices on these various levels do not occur in isolation but

are meaningfully orchestrated to promote learning for democracy. Thus, students should

be able to beneﬁt from their learning on the level of classroom activities when engaging

in school-wide practices, which, in turn, should enable them to participate in democratic

forms of social life in their communities.

As mentioned above, a number of successful practices have been identiﬁed and

described by Frank and Huddleston (2009) in a handbook with the title “Schools for

Society: Learning Democracy in Europe.” This handbook was fostered by the Initiative

for Learning Democracy in Europe (ILDE) of the Network of European Foundations.

Support for this initiative came from the Freudenberg Foundation in Germany and the

Citizenship Foundation in London within the context of the Council of Europe’s program

of Democratic Citizenship Education. The handbook consists of 23 case studies that were

drawn from 11 different European countries with quite diverse political and cultural his-

tories (Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy,

Poland, Sweden, Turkey). The projects were arranged in ﬁve different topical sections

that cut across the three categories of communal experience described above (fostering

tolerance and awareness of diversity, developing civic skills and attitudes, involving the

whole school community, creating a democratic school culture, engaging schools in their

Democracy Education in Europe s 393

communities). On the level of classroom-based activities, projects included promotion

of students’ critical thinking abilities and debating skills, improving political literacy as

well as cultivating Classrooms of Difference that aim at raising self-esteem of students

from culturally diverse and socially disadvantaged backgrounds by afﬁrming their sense

of identity. On the level of schools, projects ranged from Citizenship Manifestos (craft-

ing a short, public document that sets out a school’s vision for citizenship education),

through establishing systems of peer mediation, to organizing schools as a democratic

republic. In the latter case, students of a school generate a constitution, establish demo-

cratic institutions, such as a parliament government and independent courts, and hold

elections regularly. Community-wide activities included projects aimed at increasing

and strengthening the participatory opportunities of students in their communities,

such as integrating service to the community in the school curriculum via service learn-

ing or engaging schools with their wider communities through collaborative student

projects. In these community-based projects students were encouraged to identify a local

problem, research potential remedies, and propose a solution presented to local authori-

ties with the power to implement it (modeled after the US program Project Citizen).

These different approaches and projects clearly vary in scope and breadth. Some of them

are rather circumscribed; others are far-reaching and require fundamental changes in the

administration of schools. Regardless of scope and breadth, the successful implementa-

tion of these programs requires careful consideration of the many social, cultural, and

historical particularities that serve as the backdrop of any effort to promote democracy

learning. Learning for democracy is not cut and dried.

It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to provide a detailed description of the

many different approaches that can be taken to promote children’s and adolescents’

learning for democracy. To further illustrate important principles of democracy learning

a few examples will have to sufﬁce. These examples refer to the various communal spaces

and levels of democratic activities described above (classroom, school as a whole, the

wider community). On the level of classroom activities, we will describe the Classroom

Council as a prototype of democratic self-governance; on the level of schools we describe

peer mediation as a vehicle to improve the school culture, on the level of the wider com-

munity we will refer to service learning and volunteering as an effective way to engage

schools in their communities.

Classroom Council. The classroom council (Klassenrat) can be considered a proto-

type of democratic self-governance. It originated as a discursive device developed by

the French school reformer Celestin Freinet in the early years of the twentieth century

with the purpose of discussing issues of instruction with the class and organizing class-

room practice in the homeroom (Freinet, 1946/1979). It can be deﬁned as a particularly

effective variety of cooperative self-government as described by Piaget. In a number of

schools intent on reform of instruction and pedagogy in Germany, it has since developed

into a major example of democratic self-regulation within the classroom (Edelstein,

Frank, & Sliwka, 2009; Friedrichs, 2009; Kiper, 1997). The classroom council is the site of

collective responsibility for the life of the group. The teacher acts as a coach, rather than

as a teacher monitoring the class, while the group practices self-determination regarding

life in the classroom and the goals of common action.

Students meet regularly once a week at a ﬁxed time slot to discuss issues that have

been collected over the previous week. All students in the class are encouraged to suggest

topics for the council meeting. However, students who want to have a particular issue

394 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

discussed in the group typically need to ﬁnd seconders. Topics may range from prais-

ing classmates for doing an excellent job, to voicing criticism and expressing a desire

for changing established rules or practices. One student chairs the classroom council

meeting, while other students assist the chair, for instance, by taking minutes or by man-

aging the time. All students in the class are encouraged to take these formal roles for a

predeﬁned period of time. In the council meeting students are asked to discuss the issue

at hand and to ﬁnd an appropriate procedure for solving the problem. The classroom

council deﬁnes rules and regulations for the class, confers about classroom projects,

deﬁnes the duties of its members, their tasks, and their obligations. Votes are cast, deci-

sions are taken, conﬂicts are adjudicated, and projects are planned on the basis of discus-

sions. Various roles and tasks are carried out by elected ofﬁcers or by commissions that

report to the plenary assembly about their activities and efforts. Where a school assembly

exists, the classroom council elects one or several delegates to represent the class in that

assembly. In schools organized along participatory lines, the conference of teachers, the

headmaster, and the teacher/parents council will invite student representatives elected

by the classroom councils to participate and to share both discussions and responsibil-

ities. The councils thus operate as institutions of self-government and representational

bodies that train their members for participation and social responsibility, as well as for

collective conﬂict resolution and representative government. The foundational process

for all these functions is the discursive practice of the regular classroom council with

all members of the class attending as voting members. The council trains participants

from early on to speak and to listen; to take the perspective of the other and to assess

the power of arguments; to seek and to maintain agreement and to resolve conﬂict fairly

where agreement fails; to negotiate rules and to evaluate these in the light of experience;

to plan, and to participate in collective actions and common projects. In schools that are

geared to participatory schoolroom practice, the classroom council is the space of choice

for instructional and institutional feedback that is likely to enhance both understanding

and performance.

The practices of serving learning and social entrepreneurship in social projects can

also be organized and carried out under the supervision and with the commitment of

the Classroom Council. The same holds true for school-wide practices of peer mediation

whose organization may be linked to the classroom councils as the responsible agency

within school.

The classroom council was one of the democracy-enhancing methods adopted by

the semi-federal German program “Learning and Living Democracy” (BLK-Programm

“Demokratie lernen und leben”) active in 13 German states between 2002 and 2007.

Although, no speciﬁc evaluation of this method was implemented to gauge its effective-

ness (cf. Abs, Roczen, & Klieme, 2007), a number of publications, narrative accounts, and

ﬁlms have focused on it as a particularly effective device to train for democratic forms

of interaction and decision-making in student groups beginning with early grade levels.

Few institutional settings could be better suited than schools to develop the socio-moral

competencies and individual capabilities for cooperation and reciprocity on which the

development of the basic democratic virtues depend (Edelstein, Frank, & Sliwka, 2009;

Eikel & de Haan, 2007; Friedrichs, 2009).

We shall now proceed to describe more closely the practices of peer mediation and

projects of service learning that can either be parts of the activities of the classroom

councils or take place in schools without or beyond such councils.

Democracy Education in Europe s 395

Peer Mediation. Peer mediation is a process of conﬂict resolution in which a neutral peer

who is uninvolved in the conﬂict helps the disputing parties to reach a mutually acceptable

settlement (see Rademacher, 2009). Peer mediation, as a particular form of peer support

(similar to peer counseling and peer tutoring), was established in the US in the 1970s

and has extended into many different parts of the world since then. As peer mediation

has been widely publicized, the basic setup of this process does not need to be described

here (note, however, that there are many different forms of organizing the process of peer

mediation in schools; for an overview see Lupton-Smith, 2004). Peer mediation has been

mostly discussed as an effective way to reduce aggression, violence, and bullying in schools.

It is less known as a means for democracy education. However, conﬂicts are inevitable in

any socially heterogeneous group. The ability to deal with these conﬂicts cooperatively and

constructively is essential for developing and maintaining democratic forms of social life.

While classroom and school councils empower students to make decisions about many

school-related affairs they do not necessarily transform the power structure between indi-

vidual students on the level of their everyday interaction. This can be achieved by peer

mediation. As pointed out by Cremin (2007), per mediation in schools enables students to

engage in “cooperative conﬂicts” (Coleman, 2000). In situations of cooperative conﬂict, the

dispute is framed as a mutual problem to be solved by both parties. This leads to minimized

power differences between the disputants, and to enhanced willingness to work together

effectively to achieve shared goals. Peer mediation is a way to let students take responsibility

for conﬂict resolution. By introducing a cooperative and power-sharing approach to con-

ﬂicts young people learn to engage in the vital practice of effective dispute resolution, thus

improving the quality of life in school, and preparing them for life beyond the school gates

(Cremin, 2007). Peer mediation can be combined with other forms of self-governance, for

instance, by establishing democratic recruitment procedures for mediators, which in turn

increases students’ sense of responsibility in school.

It has been often documented that peer mediation programs, if properly supported

and resourced, can effectively improve the overall school climate and create an atmo-

sphere of mutual trust (cf. Haft & Weiss, 1998). At the same time, it has been stressed that

sustained positive effects of peer mediation require a “whole-school approach,” where

the goal of cooperative conﬂict resolution is shared by the whole school community, i.e.,

by students, teachers, headteachers, and parents. Thus, establishing and maintaining a

program of peer mediation can provide important incentives for creating a democratic

school culture.

Service Learning. We shall now proceed to the third type of educational projects

to serve the development of democratic competencies among children and adolescents

in school. This form of project is identiﬁed by its traditional American name as service

learning, in spite of the fact that it has undergone noticeable development towards a

tool for democratic action in the transfer process, especially to Germany (Sliwka, 2008;

Sliwka & Frank, 2004). (Also see chapter by Hart, Matsuba, and Atkins in this volume.) In

service learning projects students take responsibility for the common good by addressing

a social problem, working on a solution, and responding to a challenge in the community.

Generally the focus is upon local problems, but students may also choose to engage in a

school project in the third world or join a cooperative network designed to respond to a

general environmental need. In the traditional model, service learning projects work on

two fronts. On the level of practice they attempt to solve a “social problem,” e.g., helping

senior citizens to cope with computers, run a soup kitchen for a poor neighborhood,

396 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

or plant trees in a living quarter while informing citizens about climate change. Simul-

taneously, the problem will become a topic of instruction, so that the projects combine

responsibility in the communal context with social learning in school, and social action

with a rational discussion of the aim and the context of action. The cooperation of a

teacher (or several teachers) is, of course, essential. When this model of service learn-

ing is placed in a classroom with a classroom council, the council is recognized as the

collective actor pursuing the practice of social entrepreneurship in a community context.

Successful action of this kind will likely initiate strong reciprocity between the school

and the community—certainly both a case of learning through experience, and of devel-

oping the socio-moral resources of democracy. The projects call for shared action, nego-

tiation, and agreement on a common goal, rationally planning and conducting action

together, a meaningful evaluation and documentation of results, and a subsequent public

presentation. In sum, these activities entail participation and cooperation of the entire

group. In its developed form, the project productively confronts the group with social

reality. The teachers must engage in exchange with the students, by confronting a social

problem with the requirements of instruction. This process requires coordination of the

ﬂow of project time with the regulated school timetable. Finally, the school is invested

in working with the community. When implemented successfully, all of these elements

come together as a context for democracy and individual development.

Once service learning goes beyond a speciﬁc project it is transformed into what can be

called civic engagement or civic commitment, and in English may be approximately ren-

dered by volunteering or community service. Volunteering may, indeed, be understood

to transfer responsibility taken within the school to an arena outside and beyond the

school. It clearly has a positive impact on many skills and capabilities that are required for

democratic citizenship, in particular when students are encouraged to reﬂect upon their

volunteering experiences (Hart et al., this volume; Krettenauer, 2006; Yates & Youniss,

1999). Obviously, the development of the capability to volunteer in the service of the

community is a worthy goal of education in the schools, and training young people

for thoughtful commitment to issues of public welfare is a contribution to education

for democracy, where action is paired with understanding. When a classroom council

engages in this kind of action, it may organize some kind of public deliberation about an

issue of common concern (Sliwka, 2008). Public deliberation is a hotbed of democracy

development, both individual and social. When schools engage systematically in such

initiatives of civic engagement they can be seen as educating for active citizenship in the

communitarian sense of the term.

We have now described three types of democracy-enhancing activities in schools: (a)

the classroom council as an instrument of democratic self-regulation; (b) peer mediation

as a means for improving the school culture; and (c) service learning and volunteering

as a basis for developing and cultivating the competence required for community organ-

izing and democratic action in the local community. All require, and provide in practice,

the socio-cognitive and socio-moral competencies on which democratic forms of social

life thrive. In the context of a democratic school culture there is an obvious advantage

in granting the classroom council a privileged position as a center of action. This entails

organizing and planning the social projects and volunteering initiatives of the class as

an exercise in social entrepreneurship where students are trained to cooperatively and

discursively practice and develop their social-cognitive and socio-moral competencies in

the service of the socially desirable aims of citizenship and democratic empowerment.

Democracy Education in Europe s 397

CHALLENGES FOR DEMOCRACY EDUCATION

As described at the beginning of this chapter, the need for democracy education has been

recognized by many European organizations and institutions. Charters have been adopted,

agendas formulated, and many projects were initiated to jump-start democracy education

all over Europe. There is no shortage of excellent ideas to be put into action. At this point,

the question almost imposes itself: How far has Europe gone in establishing education for

democracy in schools as a cornerstone of educational practice? An answer to this question

is certainly not straightforward as the educational landscape of Europe is far too diverse for

applying a common benchmark to all countries. Moreover, for many European countries

the idea of schools as agents of democracy is still relatively new and therefore faces chal-

lenges on many different fronts. Traditionally, the school system has been organized in a

hierarchical way, where students and parents have little say in running schools, and teachers

are told what to teach. As a consequence, adults tend to be suspicious of attempts to develop

democratic schools and teachers are reluctant to grant their students the degree of auto-

nomy they have been denied by their school administration. Even if teachers are supportive

of democracy education in their school, the existing school curricula impose considerable

restrictions on them. In many European countries, the content of the school curriculum

and sometimes even the teaching methods are prescribed at a provincial or national level.

Training in reading and writing, math, science, computers, etc. takes up most of the time

and leaves little room for any cross-curricular activities. Because of the enormous pres-

sure to succeed in nation-wide tests, many principals and teachers feel that democratic

education is a luxury they cannot afford. From this perspective, it is not surprising that a

systematic study of the implementation of Education for Democratic Citizenship (EDC)

policies published in 2004 along with ﬁve regional studies (Bîrzéa et al., 2004), stated a

massive “compliance or implementation gap” between EDC declarations and the practice

in schools. The main support for EDC in many countries was found to be limited to formal

school curricula providing a structured framework for teaching civic knowledge. This

consists mostly of frontal dissemination and memory directed acquisition of information

about formal procedures and the institutional setup of government in a more or less mar-

ginal time slot of the timetable in middle classrooms, usually between the ages of 12 and 16.

Democracy education through participatory action on the level of classrooms, schools, and

in the wider community was the exception, not the rule.

Since the publication of this report in 2004 things have improved as evidenced by the

second report on Citizenship Education in Europe published by the Eurydice Network in

May 2012 (Eurydice, 2012). This report captures how polities and measures relating to cit-

izenship education in Europe have evolved since 2005, when the ﬁrst Eurydice study was

published (Eurydice, 2005). The study demonstrates that the majority of national curricula

of European countries now emphasize citizenship education as a cross-curricular dimen-

sion of the curriculum that aims at fostering key competencies for engaging in democratic

forms of life. All 31 countries that are part of the Eurydice network (EU Member states plus

Iceland, Croatia, Norway, and Turkey) have introduced measures to promote the involve-

ment of students in school governance, and half of these countries have established regula-

tions and ofﬁcial recommendations for the creation of councils at the class level. However, a

closer look reveals that students in these councils are mostly conﬁned to taking a consulta-

tive or informative role. Thus, students are allowed to voice their opinions on school matters

and to inform other students of decisions that are made by the school management, but

398 s W. Edelstein and T. Krettenauer

they do not participate in actual decision-making. In around a third of European countries

the involvement of students in citizenship-related activities outside the school is explicitly

promoted by national curricula or other recommendations and regulations. When school

principals were directly asked about civic engagement of their students in the community,

responses suggest that 66.2% of Grade 8 students in European countries had an opportunity

to participate in an awareness-raising campaign, and 55% took part in activities related to an

environmental issue at the local level. Moreover, almost half of the students had been given

the opportunity to be involved in activities related to human rights projects (47.5%) and to

help under-privileged people or groups (46.6%). Activities related to improving facilities in

the local community were least common in European countries (22%).

Although these numbers suggest that some progress has been made with regard to educa-

tion for democratic citizenship in European countries, challenges continue to thwart the

project. Both Eurydice reports from 2005 and 2012 emphasize the enormous difﬁculties in

assessing, evaluating, and monitoring educational performance with regard to democracy

education. The development of assessment methods for students’ democratic competencies

that go beyond measuring the acquisition of theoretical knowledge has been identiﬁed as

one of the major challenges in the ﬁeld of citizenship education (Eurydice, 2005, 2012). A

second major challenge is related to preparation, professional development, and support

for teachers and school heads. While European countries have reformed their citizen-

ship education curricula in response to the initiatives of the Council of Europe described

at the beginning of this chapter, the introduction of related reforms in teacher education

and professional development remains the exception. This failure is reﬂected by another

sobering ﬁnding reported in the Eurydice study (Eurydice, 2012). When Grade 8 teach-

ers of ordinary school subjects (who were, thus, not specialized on civic education) were

asked about the most important aims for civic and citizenship education only 4.4% con-

sidered “future political engagement” to be an important goal. In fact, out of a list of 10 goals

“future political engagement” ranked last, whereas the more traditional role of “promoting

knowledge of citizens’ rights and responsibilities” was the front-runner (63% endorsement).

Knowledge about rights and responsibilities is a necessary condition for democratic parti-

cipation. However, as should have become evident throughout this chapter it is far from

being sufﬁcient.

CONCLUSION

The school-based institutions and processes described in this chapter appear to be poten-

tially powerful strategies for the construction, among the young, of the socio-moral

resources needed to develop and maintain democracy as a normative value and as a

functional way of life. By sharing exercises of democratic participation and deliberation

young people are enabled to acquire the social competencies needed to engage in demo-

cratic and social practice and to develop initiatives of their own—without expecting

private proﬁts in return. Social competencies and democratic habits thus are matched

with the ability to engage in socially productive practices and commitments which help

participants preserve their identities and their self-respect even when faced with the social

challenges of poverty and precarious positions on the labor market. Social competencies

and democratic habits are the social capital of tomorrow. And they may even contribute

importantly to economic capital—as some exceptional economists like George Soros,

Mohammed Junus, or Amartya Sen would believe, whose capability approach has been

Democracy Education in Europe s 399

important for the present argument (see Otto & Ziegler, 2010; Walker & Unterhalter,

2007), whose roots, however, derive from concepts of social cognitive development for-

mulated by Piaget, Selman, and Kohlberg.

Democratic self-regulation and democratic projects in schools serve the development

of social competencies—the socio-moral resources required for processes of democratic

deliberation and decision-making, of conﬂict resolution, of responsible cooperation

and participation. On the other hand, these competencies are essential for maintaining

democratic forms of life. Democratic school cultures generate democratic habits among

their members, enabling them to participate responsibly in democratic institutions as

adults. The classroom council is a central device for the development of a democratic

school culture. But besides its aims of preparing a democratic form of future life, the

practices that characterize democratic schools improve the present atmosphere of these

institutions so as to enhance pupils’ motivation and performance, and to generate a

sense of belonging and empowerment. It turns out that—almost unintended—these are

milestones on the path to more efﬁcient schools.

Democratic schools are inclusive schools that foster social cohesion and successfully

integrate poor children into the school community. Inclusive schools work towards

integrating children of migrant origin into both the school and the social communities.

Democratic schools are the best defense against the transmission of poverty from one

generation to the next.

Democratic convictions thrive on experience. Nothing will contribute more to the

stability of democratic ways of life and institutions than the commitment of the young

generation rooted in the experience of active participation and empowerment (cf.

Dewey, 1963). Whereas democratic schools are called for on normative grounds as both

a consequence and a prerequisite of children’s rights, on empirical grounds and based

on reliable evidence they also promise to be the better schools. All prize-winning schools

selected for the Robert Bosch Foundation’s German School Award 2007 turned out to

be democratic schools. However, the jury was not awarding a prize for democracy in

schools. They were giving a prize for good practices, to the best schools and these happened

to be democratic schools (Beutel & Fauser, 2009).

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401

DEMOCRATIC MORAL EDUCATION IN CHINA

Sharon To, Shaogang Yang, and Charles C. Helwig

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter, we will look at how moral education in China transformed from

a purely political/ideological form of indoctrination to an increasingly more holis-

tic approach designed to meet changing social needs and to address the problems

encountered by more traditional moral education efforts. The current moral educa-

tion curriculum has been implemented since 2003 in primary and secondary schools

according to the Guidelines for Ideology and Morality in Full-time Compulsory Educa-

tion (PRCMOE, 2003). This curriculum has generally moved in the direction of the

establishment of a democratic classroom where students ideally have input into the

classroom discourse and are being treated as unique individuals whose perspectives

and views need to be respected and heard. As we will see, these changes in the ideas

and practice of moral education are helping to meet not only the economic needs of

the rapidly changing Chinese society, but also the psychological and developmental

needs of adolescents in China. However, these democratic reforms coexist with the

retention of more traditional forms of moral and political or ideological education,

often in an uneasy and complex relation. We will argue that the kind of democratic

moral education efforts emerging in China is consistent with recent and ongoing psy-

chological theory and research that examines how autonomy support and democratic

classroom environments promote adolescents’ moral and cognitive development, as

well as their psychological well-being. These changes in Chinese moral education

programs, however, are also fraught with conﬂicts, paradoxes, and tensions, as educa-

tional systems and schools within China encounter difﬁculties of various sorts in fully

putting these reforms into practice. The issues raised in our review are not wholly

unique to China, but have parallels with similar efforts to instantiate a more demo-

cratic form of moral education in schools and classrooms in Western societies.

402 s S. To et al.

HISTORY OF MORAL EDUCATION IN CHINA

In order to appreciate the current Chinese moral education curriculum, it is necessary

to examine the historical, social, and political inﬂuences that have molded and shaped

its modern form. Throughout most of China’s 5,000 years of history, ideological shifts in

conceptions of morality were often accompanied by political policy change and reform.

For example, Confucianism emerged as a Chinese philosophy during the Spring and

Autumn period of Chinese history (771

BC–476 BC), and was then regarded as the ortho-

doxy since the Han Dynasty (206

BC–AD 220) up to the Communist revolution. During the

period following the Communist revolution, Confucianism was dismantled and replaced

by socialist ideology based on Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, the ofﬁ-

cial Ideology of the ruling Communist Party of China. After Deng Xiaoping’s “reform

and opening up” policy at the end of the 1970s, China’s economy started booming as

capitalist ideas and materialism took its hold on the country. Material gain and the accu-

mulation of personal wealth became the overarching emphasis amongst the population.

These changes further brought to light issues of corruption, often popularized in the

growing national media, and similar efforts by the ruling Communist Party to address

these pervasive social problems. In this atmosphere, many people started questioning

the lack of morality in their day-to-day lives and started turning back to the teachings of

Confucianism for answers (Ai, 2008; Yu, 2008). Accordingly, we will attempt to under-

stand how social and political changes in various historical periods have also changed

and shaped the form and hence the practice of the current moral curriculum in China.

Reform policy scholars have generally divided the development of Chinese moral

education into four periods of development: 1) before 1949; 2) between 1949 and 1966,

when the ﬁrst education reform happened after the establishment of the PRC; 3) between

1966 and 1976 when the Cultural Revolution suspended schooling altogether; and 4)

after 1976 when the reform and opening up policy was implemented (e.g., M. Li, Taylor,

& Yang, 2004; P. Li., Zhong, Lin, & Zhang, 2004). (New educational reforms begun in

2003, i.e., the “Guidelines,” to be subsequently described, may be considered extensive

enough to have opened up a new chapter in the development of moral education in

China.) Since the end of the ﬁrst historical reference point until current times, China has

transformed from a closed, conservative, authoritarian society to a more open, diverse,

and modern society. Each of these four periods signiﬁcantly shaped moral education

development in China. During the ﬁrst period following the establishment of the PRC,

moral education, or deyu, was a means of political socialization used to uphold the

socialist government. Gradually moral education partially delinked itself from politics

and currently its focus—at least ofﬁcially—is to serve the development of students and,

by extension, to strengthen society.

Origin of Chinese Moral Education (Zhou Dynasty)

The origins of Chinese moral education can be dated as far back as 3,000 years ago,

when Zhou Gong (the Duke of Zhou) initiated the concept of “ruling the country by

morality” (P. Li et al., 2004). He is the ﬁrst person in Chinese history to write a moral text

that systematically expounded the ethical interpersonal relationships that should exist

between people in a hierarchical society (Yang, 2012). The “Zhou” rite system deals with

the basic codes of conduct that govern all aspects of a person’s social life. For example,

he established “ﬁlial piety” as the core ethical code to regulate the relationships within

Democratic Moral Education in China s 403

the family and mandate the ethics of “father as the leader” in the family. This relation-

ship framework extended from the father-son relationship to that of monarch-subject.

The monarch of the country was regarded as the leader in the political system just as the

father was seen as the leader in the family unit. This link between interpersonal relation-

ships and political stability provided the framework for Confucian social morality that

was to follow.

Everyone had his/her deﬁning role in society according to his or her respective posi-

tion in the hierarchy (e.g., parents must provide and children must serve and obey).

These hierarchical relationships were mirrored in politics. As a result, few distinctions

were made between moral and political principles. This moral system, developed in

the Western Zhou Dynasty (eleventh century–776

BC), laid the foundation for Chinese

ethical culture/morality and set the tone for moral education that would extend for more

than two millennia.

Confucianism and Moral Education

While the concept of ﬁlial piety and its conceptual framework of social hierarchy

was ﬁrst laid down by Zhou Gong, it was Confucius and his writings that propelled

it into the forefront of Chinese philosophical thought. Confucius was a philosopher

during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history (771

BC–476 BC). During that

time, China was divided into several opposing states. War was rampant as these states

battled one another. Strangely enough, this was a golden age for Chinese philosophy

that became known as the Hundred Schools of Thought (Roetz, 1993). The rulers of

each state sought whatever advantage they could over their opposition. Philosophers,

thinkers, and scholars were highly valued as advisers who had the potential to tip the

scale in their employer’s favor. They gave advice on a myriad of topics including war,

diplomacy, economics, etc. Confucian philosophy itself emphasized a variety of moral

matters, including governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, and

justice and honesty, but it was not particularly inﬂuential during his lifetime. Yet his

teachings were later translated/interpreted by authoritarian political philosophers into

strict guidelines, distilling the complexity of his elaborate system of moral philosophy

and political theory into a simple message: obedience (Roetz, 1993). This resulted in a

common misconception about the association of Confucianism and immutable hier-

archy of authority and unquestioning obedience. In contrast to what many believe,

while Confucius prized hierarchy and order, democratic ideals are also present in funda-

mental Confucian thinking about the ideal state and family (de Bary & Weiming, 1998).

Indeed, Confucianism is not only about learning moral values and generally honoring

role obligations; it also encourages moral reﬂection on conventional virtues, and frowns

upon blindly following the “right” principles. Confucius believed that blind subservi-

ence should not happen within the family or the nation and mere conformity should

be avoided (for elaboration of some of these misconceptions, see de Bary & Weiming,

1998; Helwig, 2006a; Roetz, 1993).

During the Han dynasty, Confucianism was adopted by the emperor as the ofﬁcial

ideology of the state in order to maintain social stability. Socially conservative interpreta-

tions of Confucian teachings were used to achieve this aim. This resulted in a “politicized

Confucianism” that dominated the ofﬁcial state ideology of China until it was replaced

by the “Three Principles of the People” ideology with the establishment of the Republic

of China.

404 s S. To et al.

The Establishment of the PRC

In 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established. It was led by the Com-

munist Party of China (CPC) with Mao Zedong ruling the country as Chairman of the

CPC. With the establishment of the PRC also came the ﬁrst restructuring of educa-

tion in terms of its goals and focus, its organization, curriculum, and the population it

served. Universal access to education implied that moral education was no longer solely

granted to the privileged few (e.g., advisors to the monarch), but to all people across

the country. The aim of moral education was also modiﬁed to serve the revolution and

the new “democracy” in building a socialist government. With the highly politically-

oriented education content focusing on Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought

as its guidelines, moral education was often synonymous with ideo-political education.

Accordingly, citizenship values, such as patriotism and collectivism, which emphasized

the subordination of the individual to the greater interest of the society or the group,

were viewed as in accord with national goals and hence were propagandized as part of

moral education (Lee & Ho, 2005).

Cultural Revolution

A decade of political, economic, and social turmoil began in 1966 during the socio-polit-

ical movement known as the Cultural Revolution. In order to impose Maoist orthodoxy

within the Party and to enforce Communism to foster social equality in the country, Mao

Zedong inaugurated mass mobilization of urban Chinese youth as part of the move-

ment to eliminate differences between town and city, workers and peasants, and mental

and manual labor. Schools were closed and students were encouraged/forced to join the

Red Guard units, which denunciated and persecuted Chinese teachers and intellectu-

als, and engaged in widespread book burnings. At that time, moral education became

a tool for indoctrination. Emphasis was placed on passivity, conformity, and obedience

to authority. These values were guided by Maoist doctrine as they were expounded in

The Little Red Book, otherwise known as Quotations of Chairman Mao, of which every

Chinese citizen was issued a copy. The social movement soon turned into violence and

resulted in widespread factional conﬂicts in all walks of life, especially during 1967–1969.

The ensuing chaos paralyzed China politically and signiﬁcantly affected the country

economically and socially. Due to the close association that moral education had with

these events during the Cultural Revolution, there was a general sense of disdain towards

moral education until its next overhaul in the late 1970s.

Implementation of Reform and Opening Up Policy

In the period following the Cultural Revolution, the development of the education

system in China mainly has been oriented to the advancement of economic moderniza-

tion. In the late 1970s, the Chinese government (under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping)

implemented the “reform and opening up” policy. By opening the country to the rest

of the world, it aimed to move China towards becoming a modern, more democratic,

and developed country (Qi & Tang, 2004). Moral education was viewed as the founda-

tion of the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, national defense, science and

technology) in China at that time, and vocational and technical skills were considered

paramount in meeting China’s modernization goals. Among the notable initiatives to

improve the country was a 1985 plan to reform the education system. Nine years of

Democratic Moral Education in China s 405

compulsory education was called for. Aligned with policy change, emphasis was shifted

away from politics and towards economic reconstruction. Moral education practices

were also shifted/renewed accordingly, to meet this change in policy and social needs.

On the other hand, the formation of a market economy in China not only promoted eco-

nomic growth; it also brought with it an increased exposure to modern ideas, values, and

beliefs. Internet and mass media allowed unprecedented levels of communication and

promoted the exchange of ideas, especially within urban areas. The rise in popularity of

contemporary concepts such as individual rights, freedom, and democracy, interpreted

in various ways, was being recognized and revered by many youth. Hence, many of the

traditional ideas/values (e.g., hierarchical social system of interpersonal dependence)

and politicized moral education were no longer seen as appropriate for the new social

arrangements and orientation of values. Instead, modernization called for a reorienta-

tion of educational priorities. Emphases were shifted to cultivate personal qualities such

as independence, self-motivation, and creativity in students. Moral education was no

longer solely a political apparatus. Mottos such as “All we do is for the students and for

all of the students” became more common in schools (Qi & Tang, 2004). Taking teacher-

student relationships as an example, dialogue and discussion gradually permeated the

classroom, replacing the traditional authoritarian and hierarchical classroom (Qi &

Tang, 2004). At the same time as the modernization and marketization of the country

was underway, there appeared an “ideological vacuum” and a decline in morality. Con-

temporary problems of corruption and a widening gap between the standard of living of

modern, urban centers and rural areas exacerbated the sense of crisis. Neo-conservatives

saw the need to turn “back to tradition” and called for reinstating Confucian traditions,

especially its sense of social responsibility and focus on moral virtues, as a foundation on

which to rebuild Chinese cultural identity (Chen, 1997; Lee & Ho, 2005).

CURRENT CURRICULUM ON MORAL EDUCATION IN CHINA

The rapid modernization, socioeconomic development and globalization, together with

increasing implementation and practice of “quality-oriented education” brought about

further educational reform (Zhan & Ning, 2004). The latest Guidelines for Ideology and

Morality in full-time compulsory education (PRCMOE, 2003) were fully implemented

nationally in primary schools headed by Prof. Lu Jie and in junior high schools headed

by Prof. Zhu Xiaoman in Fall 2006. In this reform, while the collective and social dimen-

sions (ideological and political elements) were still very much upheld, much emphasis

also was placed on the development of personal moral qualities and moral judgment

abilities, and the psychological health of the students as individuals. These changes

addressed the needs of educating young citizens in order to develop personal qualities

that would match the features of Chinese market economy. Hence, the focus of moral

education shifted from political socialization to the promotion of individual growth.

In order to meet these ends, the new curriculum promoted a learning style that was

characterized by “autonomy, co-operation, and exploration.” It addressed the deﬁcit of

the previous curriculum, namely the lack of relevance in students’ lives and attempted

to increase students’ motivation for the subject matter by emphasizing active learning

about matters that were practical and pertinent to the students (Lee & Ho, 2005; Zhan

& Ning, 2004). Being student-centered was the core concept of the new curriculum. The

curriculum also adapted its teaching content according to the students’ cognitive and

406 s S. To et al.

moral development, gradually expanding the consideration of the life world relation-

ships of the students—e.g., from the Growing Self, to the Relations between Self and

Others, and then to the Relations between Self, Collective, State, and Society (Zhan &

Ning, 2004). These themes were integrated with the four subject areas, namely Mental

Health, Morality, Law, and National Conditions Education, and were implemented in

every grade.

While Guidelines expounded an idealized vision of the new moral education curric-

ulum, turning theory into practice and bringing the essence of the curriculum into play

in the classroom is a task with many difﬁculties and obstacles. This is particularly the

case for teachers who have not received training to better understand and utilize the

skills that are needed to deliver the new curriculum. Instead, many maintain a traditional

teacher’s role and continue with an indoctrinating approach that only allows unidirec-

tional knowledge transmission in the classroom (Zhu & Liu, 2004). Moreover, despite

the emphasis on balancing knowledge and practice, many teachers keep devoting the

majority of their time to textbook knowledge versus real-life practice. There is also a

downplaying of moral education by teachers or parents, as the educational system in

China is heavily geared toward preparing students for the national standardized exami-

nations that determine students’ eligibility for university, and moral education is not part

of the subject matter of these exams (Zhan & Ning, 2004). As argued long ago by Dewey

(1916), democratic education must be a part of the whole school climate, but attempts

by educational innovators to give full life to the democratic spirit of the new curriculum

are often greeted with great suspicion. One example is the citizenship training program

in Shenzhen Nanshan Afﬁliated School, which was initiated by the principal, Li Qing-

ming. He pushed for the idea of Equality and Respect, launched an “Election Month”

for students to learn about elections, and set up monthly meetings to allow teachers to

listen to students’ questions/criticisms so that students could have a channel to express

their views and learn about public affairs participation in action. However, his approach

has been questioned and criticized by many parents and educators (Liu & Lin, 2010). He

was publicly known as a controversial person and was often seen by education leaders

and colleagues as “strange” (he was often referred to by them as “madman”). One of the

criticisms leveled against him was that he did not use his time properly to teach, and

instead used it to make things “messy.” Parents expressed worries that letting their child

participate in these activities (e.g., being a representative in the students’ association)

would affect their academic performance and hurt their chances of getting into a good

university.

An additional issue concerns the enormous complexity of the curriculum, and at

times, tensions within parts of the new curriculum itself. The current moral education

curriculum is extremely heterogeneous, and draws on both “newer” democratic values

as well as more traditional values, sometimes in an uneasy mixture. For example, the

new curriculum includes a combination of values drawn from the older ideological

approach to moral education (e.g., patriotism, collectivism, and socialism) as well as

traditional Chinese moral values of honesty, respect for others, self-discipline, and even

“knowing shame” (Fung, 1999), along with “modern” values such as open-mindedness

and a pioneering spirit (Zhan & Ning, 2004). According to Zhan & Ning (2004), the goals

of the new curriculum are to help students to be “independent and critical in think-

ing and questioning” and to establish in the classroom a democratic environment in

which students can “exchange their own ideas.” Yet, in addition, other goals of the new

Democratic Moral Education in China s 407

curriculum (Zhan & Ning, 2004) are: to teach students to “cherish the collective interest,”

to “habitually follow the law,” to show “ﬁlial piety to parents,” and to “increasingly love

the Communist Party of China and the motherland” in order to “make them understand

that, led by the CPC, the route to socialism with Chinese characteristics will improve

people’s living standards and make possible personal goals” that are also “in agreement

with the common ideal.” By any measure, this is a rather tall order for any moral educa-

tion program to carry, with a lot of potential contradictions to resolve in practice and

for a complex and changing social reality as in China today (M. Li, 2011). Cheung and

Pan (2006) have described the current situation in China as essentially one of “regulated

individualism,” in which a much larger space has been granted by the State for individual

autonomy in the personal sphere and, as we have seen, in school classrooms, however,

“when individuals exercise their autonomy, they are not expected to challenge the social

and ideological basis of the collective” (p. 47). Other Chinese educational theorists (P. Li

et al., 2004) have noted that moral education remains in a complex and changing rela-

tion with the ofﬁcial political ideology and its aim of political indoctrination. How these

tensions ultimately may be addressed for China’s future social and political development

remains to be seen.

Other tensions involve how notions of individual rights and personal freedoms are

being incorporated and theorized within the curriculum and elsewhere (e.g., within

societal institutional and legal reforms). Within ofﬁcial Communist Party ideology, indi-

vidual rights and freedoms are seen largely conditionally and in utilitarian or instrumen-

talist terms, for example, as a means to create citizens who will have the characteristics

necessary to strengthen the State and improve the economic development of society

(Cheung & Pan, 2006; Peerenboom, 2002). This utilitarian and conditional approach

to autonomy, however, may be in tension with the new emphasis in the Chinese moral

education curriculum on self-development and psychological health. As we will see later

in the chapter, autonomy may be more than an historical or social fact emerging out of

changing societal conditions; rather, autonomy may be a universal human need that is

importantly related to individuals’ psychological health and well-being.

Finally, the ofﬁcial moral education curriculum itself is not the only way in which

morality is socialized and taught within the schools (Zhu & Liu, 2004). Extracurricu-

lar activities also play a major role, and these activities are often designed to enhance

group solidarity and to inculcate associated values, such as patriotism, through means

such as routines, modeling, and rewards. For example, Zhu and Liu (2004) describe the

morning meeting ritual in Chinese schools in which the national ﬂag is raised every

Monday. During this meeting, three students who are believed to have “well-rounded

development” are selected to raise the ﬂag. These students announce to other students

the reasons they were selected in order to encourage others to behave well so that they

may also gain such an honor. Following this, the principal or sometimes another student

makes a patriotic speech. In other such activities, student groups, such as the Youth

League or Young Pioneers (student Communist Party associations), organize class activ-

ities that also have moral and patriotic educative functions, sometimes incorporating

rewards, medals, and other honors associated with demonstrations of virtues or desir-

able characteristics. These approaches, and the social hierarchies they may create, typic-

ally involve “heteronomous” moral education methods that, although consistent with

the older ideological moral education, may run counter to the principles of equality

and critical reﬂection meant to form the heart of the new, democratic moral education

408 s S. To et al.

curriculum (P. Li et al., 2004). In reality, Chinese students thus experience a diverse range

of moral education efforts in schools, each with varying views of the agent (active versus

passive, students as equals versus as subordinates) that may not always be consistent in

underlying philosophy or values.

CONFLICTS, TENSIONS, AND HETERODOXY: PARALLELS WITH

WESTERN MORAL AND DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION

In the previous section, we have provided an overview of the historical development

of moral education philosophies and practices in China from Confucianism through

the Maoist Communist era to the more recent period of “opening up” characterized by

enormous economic and cultural transformations. The contemporary state of Chinese

moral education can be described as one of complexity, heterogeneity, and even contra-

diction, with more traditional practices and philosophical approaches enduring and

coexisting alongside more recent democratic and child-centered educational innova-

tions. Indeed, many parallels may be drawn between this state of affairs and that of con-

temporary moral and civics education efforts in the West. Western educational theorists

have frequently drawn a contrast between character and civics education (e.g., Osborne,

2004; Sears & Hughes, 2006), each having a different perspective on the overall aims of

education and on the child as a moral agent in this process. Character education has tradi-

tionally been concerned with instilling in the child those traits deemed morally desirable

by society, such as honesty, compassion, duty, loyalty, love of country, and a good work

ethic. As Osborne (2004, p. 13) states, the character education approach has “equated the

good citizen with the good person, the man or woman who helps others, respects other

people’s rights, obeys the laws, is suitably patriotic, and the like.” In accordance with

this approach, there is an emphasis on molding citizens to become productive contrib-

utors to the workplace, and the emphasis is on duties and responsibilities over rights.

The pedagogical model implicit and sometimes explicit in this approach is a top-down

emphasis on ﬁxed social traditions and values transmitted to the child through routines,

habits, role models, and repetition (Schaps, Shaeffer, & McDonnell, 2001). In contrast,

civics education emphasizes the rights and duties of democratic citizenship, with the

goal of helping children to become critical and reﬂective citizens who can contribute

to public democratic institutions and themselves help shape social change. Within this

perspective, children’s own rational autonomy is given center stage, and moral education

efforts accordingly stress “open ended” problems, deliberation and debate, and the need

for active participation in democratic social life.

Given the democratic political culture of Western societies and the emphasis on

personal autonomy and rights, it might be expected that civics education would be

the dominant approach in moral education in North America, but many reviews over

several decades have suggested otherwise (Helwig & Yang, in press). Berman (1997) has

noted that much of what is taught in civics classes in the United States and Canada con-

sists of dry, disembodied facts and deﬁnitions, usually centering on the structure and

workings of government. Controversial issues and conﬂicts tend to be downplayed or

even avoided, and the role of the citizen is largely relegated to voting (Caroll et al., 1989).

In both elementary and secondary schools, lectures followed by recitation or individual

work comprise the main form of civics instruction (Berman, 1997). This state of affairs

is not limited to North America. Strikingly, a survey of 90,000 students in 28 countries

Democratic Moral Education in China s 409

found that only 16% of students stated that their civics teachers sometimes allowed class

discussions (Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald, & Schultz, 2001). The prevailing approach

to civic education in many countries, including Western democracies, appears to be ill-

suited to stimulating students’ critical thinking and reﬂection and engaging their actual

moral reasoning.

Western educational theorists have cited several reasons for the failure to adopt a more

constructivist and democratic form of civics education, and these reasons are strikingly

similar to those proffered by Chinese educators in discussing problems with implement-

ing the new moral education curriculum in China (Zhan & Ning, 2004). First, many

teachers and administrators themselves may hold a more traditional view of education

focusing on the need to prepare students for conformity to adult roles and institutions,

rather than instilling a critical or democratic consciousness. Teachers and administrators

may fear ceding control of the classroom to students and the ramiﬁcations of this for

maintaining classroom order. There is also a tendency for teachers to avoid controver-

sial issues because of fear over retribution from parent organizations or administrators

(Berman, 1997). Time pressures and a focus on standardized tests and “objective” out-

comes may work against implementing more student-centered teaching methods. And

ﬁnally, many teachers may feel ill-prepared to handle constructivist methods in their

classrooms, having little experience or training with such methods themselves (Helwig

& Yang, in press).

ILLUMINATING THE TENSIONS: RECENT RESEARCH ON AUTONOMY,

DEMOCRATIC CLASSROOMS, AND STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES IN

CHINA AND IN WESTERN CULTURES

These tensions between the different philosophies and approaches to moral education

evident in both China and the West probably reﬂect the inevitable differences among the

perspectives of the various stakeholders in educational systems (e.g., teachers, students,

administrators, governments). Teachers and authorities may be more concerned with

transmitting speciﬁc content or with maintaining order, whereas students may be eager

to try out their developing sense of autonomy in educational realms, including in engage-

ment with relevant but at times controversial moral or social issues. In support of the

latter, research on conceptions of moral education among North American students has

found that, beginning in the elementary school years and increasingly with age, students

tend to prefer constructivist methods (e.g., class discussions) to top-down or teacher-

centered approaches such as lectures (Helwig, Ryerson, & Prencipe, 2008). Furthermore,

students who experience more democratic classrooms (those with greater opportunities

for student involvement and choice) have been found to have fewer symptoms of anxiety

or depression and exhibit less conduct problems than those who are taught in a more

authoritarian or traditional manner (Way, Reddy, & Rhodes, 2007).

This process appears to reﬂect an extension into the educational sphere of a more

general developmental phenomenon in which children’s desire for autonomy expands

in tandem with their developing competencies and abilities (e.g., Erikson, 1968; Helwig,

2006b; Nucci, 2001; Smetana, 2011). Some theorists have proposed that autonomy is a

universal and basic psychological need, necessary for optimal human ﬂourishing and

functioning (Ryan & Deci, 2011). Autonomy here is meant to involve the exercise of will

and choice, along with the autonomous endorsement of the choices one makes, rather

410 s S. To et al.

than “independence” from others as it is sometimes characterized (Kagitcibasi, 2005).

Thus, individuals can be both autonomous (having opportunities to exercise their will

and choice) and interdependent and therefore connected with others; indeed, optimal

human ﬂourishing and well-being is believed to be associated with the satisfaction of both

needs for autonomy and relatedness with others (Ryan & Deci, 2011). When both needs

are supported and met in social and institutional settings, the character of interpersonal

(including student-teacher) relations becomes more one of mutual respect (Piaget, 1932),

a cornerstone of democratic social systems (Dewey, 1916; Helwig & McNeil, 2011). Seen

in this way, calls for greater acknowledgment of children’s autonomy and participation

in moral educational settings voiced by both Chinese and Western educational theorists

(and attempts to instantiate it in the new curriculum in China) may be interpreted to

reﬂect an emerging recognition of the importance of children’s autonomy by educators

and policy makers in diverse cultural settings, and the necessity of coordinating these

psychological requirements with complex institutional goals and values.

This conclusion, however, is likely to be at odds with certain popular social scient-

iﬁc theories that have maintained that cultures have widely varying notions of self and

morality that may be fundamentally incommensurable (Haidt, 2012; Shweder, Maha-

patra, & Miller, 1987). In particular, the cultural universality of autonomy and rights,

along with their meaning and implications for social and moral development in diverse

cultural settings, have been the subject of recent debates in social scientiﬁc circles. For

example, some theorists working within a perspective known as “cultural psychology”

have emphasized the cultural shaping of human conceptions of self and morality and

their concomitant variations across cultures (e.g., Miller, 1994). With regard to autonomy,

some have argued that autonomy follows a different developmental pathway in different

societies, with individual choice, equality, and personal decision making a hallmark

of children’s development and socialization in “Western” or “individualistic” societies,

whereas in other societies (including non-Western cultures such as China) autonomy

is believed to be realized through increasing conformity to received social duties, the

dictates of authorities, and the desires of groups to which individuals have strong iden-

tiﬁcations (Greenﬁeld, Keller, Fuligni, & Maynard, 2003). The conclusion that human

autonomy in the form of personal choice is universally valued, for example, has been

argued to be a product of a particular focus in psychological research on samples from

Western, highly educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies (or “WEIRD”

peoples, see Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). In contrast, individuals in the rest of

the world are believed to prize social harmony, adhering to received social duties and fol-

lowing the group, in accordance with a more sociocentric or interdependent self (Markus

& Kitiyama, 1991—but see Miller, Rekha, & Chakravarthy, 2011, for a recent “middle”

ground that acknowledges universal needs for autonomy along with cultural variations

in how these needs may be expressed). Following this line of thinking, then, the import-

ance of acknowledging and incorporating student voices and the emphasis on student

autonomy and rights that underlies constructivist moral educational approaches would

be seen as a largely “Western” conception of education that would not be expected to be

valued highly in traditional and collectivist societies such as China. If these notions are

now being incorporated into Chinese moral education, as we have seen in our historical

overview, this may only be due to the external inﬂuence of forces of Westernization as

China has opened up to the world and (perhaps inadvertently) allowed these ideas to

seep into its educational systems.

Democratic Moral Education in China s 411

We do not, however, believe that the conﬂicts and tensions that we have identiﬁed

within Chinese moral education can be explained away as merely the incorporation of

foreign ideological perspectives (“ideological pollution”). Rather, we believe that they

have their source in indigenous conﬂicts and tensions of the same general sort that

underlie similar debates and disagreements in Western educational contexts. First of

all, we note that many Chinese students expressed very positive views about the new

curriculum in the initial trial experiments conducted by Chinese educational research-

ers before its general implementation (An, 2004; Zhan & Ning, 2004). Second, as in

the West, there remain many conﬂicting perspectives within China on the new role of

students and teachers, with similar reservations about the degree of teacher prepared-

ness and concerns over the inclusion of controversial topics as documented in Western

educational settings (Zhu & Liu, 2004). In devising the new curriculum, Chinese edu-

cators looked to a variety of societies (Western and Asian), with the goal of taking from

each what they felt was useful in addressing perceived problems and deﬁciencies with the

existing Chinese moral educational system. Although student autonomy was expanded

and incorporated, often in original and even radical ways, at the same time, indigenous

Chinese ideological systems (e.g., Deng Xiaoping and Marxist Communist thought)

were retained and also given prominence, especially in regard to political education.

Rather than reﬂecting ideological colonization by Western theorizing, these reforms may

be seen as arising from indigenous issues and problems (new and old) that the previous

moral educational system was perceived as failing to adequately address.

We believe that this interpretation also is more consistent with the growing body of

moral developmental research that has been conducted in China over the past decade or

so (see Helwig, Ruck, & Peterson-Badali, 2014, for a review). The picture emerging from

this body of research is that Chinese children from a variety of settings within China, in

both urban and traditional rural environments, develop ideas about personal autonomy

and rights, and use these notions to deﬁne the boundaries of legitimate regulation between

the individual, authorities, and the group. For instance, Yau and Smetana (2003) examined

Chinese adolescents’ and their mothers’ views about familial conﬂicts and disputes in Hong

Kong and a mainland Chinese city (Shenzhen). Chinese adolescents not only experienced

frequent conﬂicts with parents (often over issues such as schoolwork, chores, and interper-

sonal relationships) but also differed with parents in their perspectives on these disputes.

Chinese adolescents frequently supported their positions with references to the importance

of being able to pursue their desires and choices and exercise their freedoms. Parents, on

the other hand, frequently appealed to authority or family rules or conventions, or concerns

about children’s safety (prudence), when justifying their perspectives. These patterns were

replicated in a subsequent study (Chen-Gaddini, 2012) that included a sample from a rural

Chinese community. In addition, Chen-Gaddini (2012) asked adolescents about how such

disputes were settled, and found that adolescents were more likely than parents to report

that disputes were settled in a unilateral way, with the parents’ views prevailing. When dis-

putes were settled unilaterally (by parental authority), rather than through negotiation

and compromise, Chinese adolescents were more likely to judge the resolutions as unfair.

Moreover, both studies (Chen-Gaddini, 2012; Yau & Smetana, 2003) found that Chinese

adolescents’ appeals to autonomy and personal choice increased with age. These studies are

consistent with developmental theories (e.g., Erikson, 1968; Nucci, 2001; Smetana, 2011)

that suggest that the expansion of autonomy in adolescence is a universal process and that

this process is regulated through reciprocal interactions, negotiations, and conﬂicts with

412 s S. To et al.

parental or other authority ﬁgures. They are not consistent, however, with the view that

autonomy takes a different form in “collectivist” or non-Western cultures or that adoles-

cents within these societies simply conform to authority or existing social norms or expec-

tations in an uncritical fashion.

Perhaps most striking in this regard was the ﬁnding that appeals to autonomy and

personal choice were greater in the more traditional rural setting (Chen-Gaddini, 2012).

Although rural settings have changed less than urban settings, both economically and

culturally, and have much less exposure to Western inﬂuences (Tang & Parish, 2000),

adolescents within these environments not only develop notions of autonomy based on

personal choice and freedom, but appeal to these notions in instances of disputes or con-

ﬂicts with parents even more than those who are socialized in more modern, urban (and

possibly more “Westernized”) settings. This ﬁnding is consistent with the notion that a

heightened sense of autonomy may arise when cultural practices place too many restric-

tions on people’s basic needs for autonomy and personal choice (Helwig, 2006b; Lau,

1992; Lo, Helwig, Chen, Ohashi, & Cheng, 2011). Taken together, these ﬁndings suggest

that autonomy is not something that is simply absorbed directly from cultural practices

but is constructed out of the complex interplay of individual psychological needs and

how these needs may be met or thwarted in different societies and in more proximal

environments within societies such as the family or school (Chirkov & Ryan, 2001).

As noted, the new curriculum within China reﬂects the incorporation of greater

student choice and involvement, and more room for class discussions, including even

over social issues that may be considered controversial. Thus, the form of autonomy

instantiated in the new curriculum reﬂects a recognition of children’s “intellectual rights”

(Moshman, 1986) to freedom of expression and belief. These particular rights are often

characterized as “Western” notions more associated with liberal democratic political

systems. However, recent research has shown that Chinese adolescents also understand

and apply these rights when reasoning about conﬂicts with authorities in school and

family settings. For example, Lahat, Helwig, Yang, Tan, and Liu (2009) investigated urban

and rural Chinese adolescents’ conceptions of various “self-determination” rights, such

as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and privacy, as well as other rights associated

with children’s psychological and physical well-being. With age, Chinese adolescents in

both urban and rural settings increasingly afﬁrmed children’s self-determination rights

to freedom of speech (e.g., whether it would be acceptable for a school principal to pro-

hibit a high school student from publishing an article in the school newspaper critical

of the school rules) and freedom of religion (whether a child’s parents, who are atheists,

could prohibit a child from belonging to a religion of the child’s choice). In supporting

these rights, Chinese adolescents appealed to individual rights, autonomy, and universal

freedoms. These ﬁndings show that Chinese adolescents understand personal choice and

freedom as extending to freedom of conscience and expression, key foundational con-

cepts for a truly democratic civic and moral education.

Other recent research on Chinese adolescents’ concepts of democratic decision making

has yielded some interesting ﬁndings directly relevant to curricular issues in school set-

tings. In one study (Helwig, Arnold, Tan, & Boyd, 2003), Chinese adolescents from three

settings (a rural village, a small city, and a large, modern city) were asked about dif-

ferent ways to make decisions in a variety of settings, including the peer group, family,

and school. The speciﬁc decisions were varied, and adolescents were asked to evaluate

the acceptability of making decisions in a purely authority-based fashion (teachers or

Democratic Moral Education in China s 413

parents decide unilaterally), by majority rule (a vote, with children having equal say as

adult authorities) or by consensus (everyone, adults and children must agree). One of

the decisions concerned whether parents should require a child to take special tutoring

on weekends to boost the child’s grades in school. This is a common practice in China,

where parents are typically highly involved in decisions over academic matters. However,

it was found that most Chinese adolescents from all three settings rejected parents

making this decision alone. Many of them endorsed consensus because it would require

the child’s assent. In their reasoning, Chinese adolescents appealed to the child’s right to

make the decision and to the negative effects of coercion upon the child’s motivation,

psychological health, and well-being. Here are two examples of characteristic responses

(both from senior high school students):

“Tutoring will only be effective when the child wants to learn. Also, the child has

the right to arrange her own time. Parents should give the child the right to veto [if

parents make the decision unilaterally].”

“Many things, such as natural inclination, creativity, and freedom, are strangled

because of this.”

A second example from this research pertained to how the school curriculum (what the

child learns in class) should be decided. Although the curriculum in China is decided

centrally (by educational authorities), Chinese adolescents nonetheless tended to prefer

democratic decision making (such as by consensus or majority rule) because it would

lead to overall agreement and stimulate children’s learning and motivation. Many of

them explicitly took a critical perspective on curricula decided solely by educational

authorities, as reﬂected in the following examples:

“Education authorities’ decisions are only based on examinations, and make us learn

the boring texts. As to today’s education, it develops one’s interest. No to education

authorities’ decision!”

“This [authority decides] will make kids passive in action. . . . When kids want to

learn a subject, they must be interested in it. As it goes, interest is the best teacher.

This way [majority decides] will make them learn actively.”

This study (Helwig et al., 2003) was conducted before the new moral education curric-

ulum was implemented and was directed at the curriculum in general (not moral

education in particular), so we do not know how these adolescents might have

responded to the newer educational reforms. However, these studies reveal that Chinese

adolescents clearly value their own autonomy and personal choice, recognize the

importance of intellectual freedoms such as freedom of expression, and endorse more

active, autonomy-supportive forms of teaching over rote memorization or traditional,

top-down approaches. These ﬁndings also suggest that the curriculum reforms dis-

cussed earlier have arisen in response to long-standing issues and problems recognized

by stakeholders (e.g., Chinese students themselves) and also by many progressive

Chinese educators who are concerned with incorporating students’ perspectives and

voices (M. Li, 2011; P. Li et al., 2004).

414 s S. To et al.

Other research on Chinese children’s conceptions of moral education practices used

in the family suggests that Chinese children take a critical perspective on more tra-

ditional Chinese socialization methods based on shaming or “psychological control”

(Barber, 1996). For example, Helwig, To, Wang, Liu, and Yang (in press) examined

urban and rural Chinese children’s and adolescents’ (7–13 years of age) judgments

about a variety of hypothetical moral socialization practices used by parents when a

child commits a moral transgression (i.e., hits another child and takes the child’s pos-

session). Overall, in both urban and rural Chinese settings and in a Canadian com-

parison sample, children preferred parental use of what Hoffman (2000) has termed

“induction” (or parental reasoning accompanied by encouragement of perspective

taking and the child’s consideration of the consequences of their actions on others)

over other socialization practices such as parental shaming involving negative compari-

sons with other children (e.g., appeals for the child to be more like other children who

behave better), appeals to group-based social shame (e.g., the family “losing face”), and

love withdrawal (explicit withdrawal of affection), despite the fact that rural Chinese

children saw these other types of parental practices (shaming and love withdrawal) as

much more commonly used by parents than did Canadian children. Across both set-

tings, when asked to justify their evaluations, children, with age, increasingly viewed

shaming and love withdrawal as psychologically harmful forms of discipline and they

preferred induction or reasoning because of its perceived ability to stimulate moral

reﬂection, empathy, and understanding. Chinese children did not support the types

of shaming practices used and endorsed by parents in ethnographic and observational

studies, frequently argued to be a part of traditional Chinese moral socialization (Fung,

1999), although they sometimes recognized that parents used these practices because

they might be effective in achieving immediate compliance. These ﬁndings illustrate

the necessity of tapping into children’s own views about different types of moral educa-

tion (rather than merely “what is done”) in order to gain a complete understanding of

how cultural practices may be assimilated, evaluated, and sometimes critiqued by those

occupying different positions in social hierarchies (Turiel, 2006).

AUTONOMY, DEMOCRATIC ENVIRONMENT, AND PSYCHOLOGICAL

WELL-BEING

The research discussed so far has shown that Chinese adolescents develop views about

the child as a rational moral agent that need to be adequately incorporated into moral

education efforts, whether in the family or the school. Chinese adolescents also endorse

and apply democratic concepts such as freedom of expression and active participation

in decision making that form the core of a truly democratic education (Dewey, 1916).

As noted earlier, research in the West has found that educational environments that

incorporate these elements are associated with more positive psychological outcomes in

students, such as less depression or anxiety or conduct disorders (Way et al., 2007). Do

these relations also apply in a non-Western society such as China, especially in more tra-

ditional, rural settings? Recent research suggests that they do (Jia et al., 2009; To, Helwig,

& Yang, 2012). For example, To et al. (2012) examined democratic climate, deﬁned as

school or family environments that allow for greater opportunities for student involve-

ment in decision making, and authority support for students’ freedom of expression and

due process rights, and how these perceived features of school classrooms or families

Democratic Moral Education in China s 415

relate to a variety of dimensions of adolescent psychological well-being, including

anxiety, depression, and overall life satisfaction. Adolescent perceptions of democratic

climate in both family and school settings was found to be positively related to adoles-

cents’ self-reported psychological well-being (i.e., predicted lower levels of anxiety and

depression, and greater overall life satisfaction). Furthermore, these relations between

democratic school and family environment and psychological well-being were just as

strong (correlations in the range of 0.2–0.4) in the more traditional rural setting (in a

Northern and mountainous area of Guangdong Province) as in the large, modern city

(Guangzhou), so they could not be accounted for simply by level of modernization or

“Westernization.”

SOME LESSONS FOR THE WEST FROM CHINA

These ﬁndings from cross-cultural research are broadly compatible with the highly

positive student survey ﬁndings generated by Chinese education researchers who inves-

tigated the reception received by the new, more autonomy-supportive moral education

curriculum (An, 2004). To be sure, these changes in the Chinese moral education cur-

riculum incorporating student autonomy exist alongside the retention of other, more

traditional educational practices, and so the transformation of Chinese moral education

is piecemeal and remains in relations of tension with other aspects of the curriculum

(and there are undoubtedly local variations in how well teachers have adhered to these

changes or in the extent to which they have wholeheartedly put them into practice). We

stress, however, that our argument should not be misconstrued to suggest a straight-

forward, historical progression, with China at an earlier “stage” and now only beginning

to incorporate, in ﬂedgling fashion, practices long in use in Western education settings

(although this may be true in some instances). Instead, our intention is to argue that

the need for student autonomy in moral educational settings is universal (despite diver-

gences in cultural values and historical patterns) and that its actual incorporation into

educational practices and settings inevitably will occur in different ways in different soci-

eties at different times.

Indeed, China currently may be in a rather unique position as a society with a cen-

tralized government heavily invested in the moral education of its citizens and where

educators thereby have the resources and opportunities to experiment on a large scale

with a greater variety of curricular practices than their counterparts in Western soci-

eties. China may even be seen as a hotbed of moral educational theorizing and innova-

tion, when compared to the highly politicized and sometimes even ossiﬁed educational

climate found in some Western countries. And so there may be many opportunities for

Western educational theorists to learn from Chinese moral educational innovations as

the democratic values long-prized in the West are tested and evaluated under very dif-

ferent cultural circumstances.

Perhaps strikingly, the new Chinese moral educational curriculum may sometimes

incorporate student autonomy, reﬂection, and democratic processes in ways that may be

considered radical or daring even within Western educational systems. As an example,

consider the following take-home exercise incorporated in the new Chinese moral educa-

tion curriculum designed to foster greater understanding and communication between

students and their parents (Zhan & Ning, 2004). In this exercise, children and their parents

are given different hypothetical types of relationship styles between children and parents

416 s S. To et al.

to evaluate (e.g., ranging from strictly controlling to democratically negotiating), and

they are asked to express agreement or disagreement with one another’s choices, to state

their reasons, and then to engage in a subsequent discussion about the points of agree-

ment and disagreement. As a moral education exercise embodying constructivist devel-

opmental principles, one could hardly imagine a practical application that is more in

line with both the spirit and the ﬁndings of developmental research conducted in North

America on familial discussions and their important role in stimulating moral develop-

ment (e.g., Walker, Hennig, & Krettenauer, 2000; Walker & Taylor, 1991). But it may be

amusing and perhaps even humbling for the Western reader to contemplate the recep-

tion (politically, and by local school boards and parent-teacher associations) that such a

pedagogical exercise would likely receive were it to be mandated on a national basis and

carried out by the public schools within a society such as the United States. The Chinese

“experiment” in the new moral educational curriculum may afford an opportunity for

Western educational theorists to reﬂect on the shortcomings of their own social institu-

tions, including ways to remove institutional inertia or other impediments, in order to

reinvigorate efforts to foster democratic schools and families in Western societies. The

ultimate lesson of these contrasts may be that democracy is something that is lived “in

the trenches,” within schools and families, in ways that often bring it into tension with

authority and received social hierarchies; it is not to be gauged merely by a simple ana-

lysis of the contrasting features of political systems (e.g., China versus the US).

CONCLUSIONS

In sum, we argue that human autonomy is a universal psychological need whose instan-

tiation is directly relevant to democratic moral education efforts such as those found

in China and elsewhere. At the same time, there are complexities and conﬂicts inevit-

ably encountered in any attempt to realize this need within diverse educational settings.

Although the particulars of the cultural and historical contexts are certainly different,

some universal processes appear to be at work in both Chinese and Western moral

education efforts, and the parallels here are worth restating. First, conceptions of moral

education are naturally heterogeneous as they are often based on incompatible funda-

mental assumptions about the particular values that should be taught or instilled as

well as the process by which moral education is best realized. One approach, associ-

ated with traditional moral education in both China and the West, emphasizes inculca-

tion of a particular set of moral values or character traits, such as patriotism or group

solidarity, often through mechanisms such as extrinsic rewards and routines (e.g., the

recitation of the US Pledge of Allegiance; the Chinese “ﬂag raising ceremony”). The

emphasis here is on creating a well-behaved citizen, one who replicates societal values

and ﬁts in to the existing social order to lead a productive life (often seen from an eco-

nomic point of view but also understood as in service of the group or society). The

other approach sees moral education as founded on the recognition of student auto-

nomy (expressed in accordance with developmentally appropriate capacities), and pri-

oritizes the cultivation of moral reasoning and reﬂection capacities. This may involve

the formation of a critical consciousness that can be applied by students to help them

to navigate a complex and often changing social reality, like that confronted by China

today. The latter approach recognizes that students themselves construct their social

worlds and are often charged with the difﬁcult task of negotiating, or even resolving,

Democratic Moral Education in China s 417

received contradictions in societal values, priorities, and goals. The main purpose of

a truly democratic moral education, then, is not to provide students with a particular

set of values (although some values may be better suited to this purpose than others),

but to give students a set of skills that will enable them to function autonomously in a

democratic social order that includes opportunities to exercise their voice to help shape

their society (and not just being shaped by it).

Of course, the democratic approach to moral and civic education is never easy to

implement, and in diverse cultures (China, North America) it confronts many similar

institutional pressures such as standardized testing and an educational system that pri-

oritizes “results” or social utility over student engagement, not to mention educational

authorities who themselves may differ in their commitment to democratic education

and their willingness to put this model of moral education into practice within their

schools or classrooms. As we have seen, these tensions may raise questions over how to

cultivate student motivation, and concerns over student perceptions of the relevance or

irrelevance of moral education to their lives. Ultimately, students’ willingness to accept

or to reject the different types of moral education efforts that they experience may rest

on how these tensions are resolved. As the emerging research on psychological outcomes

suggests, democratic moral education may not only be an ethical imperative valued and

endorsed in its own right by many people in diverse cultures. In China as elsewhere, it

could well turn out to be an important means of achieving individual—and by extension

societal—health and well-being.

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Part V

Moral and Character Education Beyond the

Classroom

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423

POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES

History, Efﬁcacy, and Links to Moral and Character Education

Richard F. Catalano, John W. Toumbourou, and J. David Hawkins

INTRODUCTION

Positive youth development (PYD) refers in broad scope to childhood and adolescent

development experiences that provide optimal life preparation for the attainment of

adult potential and well-being. This paper reviews speciﬁc conceptual frameworks and

focuses on the evidence from evaluations of program applications delivered prior to age

21 that have the common aim of encouraging PYD.

The study of optimal development is relatively new and emerges from research into

human growth through the life course. In the twentieth century, childhood and adoles-

cence came to be increasingly regarded as special periods of development in which chil-

dren were provided extra support to learn and develop. Early in the century, American

society assumed an increased sense of responsibility for the care of its young people,

including increasing the reach of education, delaying entry into the workforce, and pro-

viding supports for families who, historically, had nurtured the development of children.

As the century progressed, changes in family socialization created changes in conceptu-

alization of school and community practices to support families to raise successful chil-

dren (Weissberg & Greenberg, 1997).

Prevention of youth problems in the twentieth century has evolved from earlier treat-

ment and intervention models. Many early prevention efforts were not based on child

development theory or research, and most approaches failed to show positive impact on

youth problems (Kirby, Harvey, Claussenius, & Novar, 1989; Malvin, Moskowitz, Schaef-

fer, & Schaps, 1984; Snow, Gilchrist, & Schinke, 1985).

Faced with early failures, prevention program developers became increasingly

aligned with the science of behavior development and change, and began designing

program elements to address predictors of speciﬁc problem behaviors identiﬁed in

longitudinal and intervention studies of youth. These prevention efforts were often

guided by theories about how people make decisions, such as the Theory of Reasoned

424 s R.F. Catalano et al.

Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), and the Health Belief Model

(Janz & Becker, 1984; Rosenstock, Strecher, & Becker, 1988). In the 1980s these pre-

vention efforts focused on predictors of a single problem behavior and came under

increasing criticism for having such a narrow focus. Concerns expressed by preven-

tion practitioners, policymakers, and prevention scientists helped expand the design

of prevention programs to include components aimed at promoting positive youth

development (Catalano & Hawkins, 2002).

In the 1990s, practitioners, policymakers, and prevention scientists adopted a broader

focus for addressing youth issues (Pittman, O’Brien, & Kimball, 1993). In the late

1990s, youth development practitioners, the policy community, and prevention scien-

tists reached similar conclusions about promoting better outcomes for youth. They all

called for expanding programs beyond a single problem behavior focus and considering

program effects on a range of positive and problem behaviors (Catalano, Hawkins, Ber-

glund, Pollard, & Arthur, 2002; Kirby, Barth, Leland, & Fetro, 1991; National Research

Council Institute of Medicine, Chalk, & Phillips, 1996; Pittman, 1991). This convergence

in thinking has been recognized in forums on youth development including practition-

ers, policymakers (Pittman, 1991; Pittman & Fleming, 1991), and prevention scientists

(National Research Council Institute of Medicine, 2002; National Research Council

Institute of Medicine et al., 1996; O’Connell, Boat, & Warner, 2009) who have advocated

that models of healthy development hold the key to both health promotion and preven-

tion of problem behaviors.

POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CONSTRUCTS

In the late 1990s, a review of the literature was conducted to discover the multiple ways

PYD constructs appeared in the literature. This review was followed by a consensus

building meeting of leading scientists (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins,

1999) to create an operational deﬁnition of positive youth development constructs. This

deﬁnition was further developed by a meeting of scientists organized by the Annenberg

Sunnylands Trust (Seligman et al., 2005). The following section provides a listing fol-

lowed by a brief description of constructs addressed by youth development programs.

1. Promotes social competence

2. Promotes emotional competence

3. Promotes cognitive competence

4. Promotes behavioral competence

5. Promotes moral competence

6. Fosters self-efﬁcacy

7. Provides opportunities for prosocial involvement

8. Provides recognition for positive behavior

9. Promotes bonding

10. Promotes strength of character

11. Fosters self-determination

12. Fosters clear and positive identity

13. Fosters belief in the future

14. Fosters prosocial norms

15. Fosters spirituality

Positive Youth Development in the US s 425

16. Promotes life satisfaction

17. Fosters positive emotions

18. Fosters resilience

Promotes Competencies

Competence covers ﬁve areas of youth functioning: social, emotional, cognitive, behavi-

oral, and moral competencies.

SOCIAL COMPETENCE

Social competence is a range of interpersonal skills that help youth integrate feelings,

thinking, and actions in order to achieve speciﬁc social and interpersonal goals (Caplan

et al., 1992; Weissberg, Caplan, & Sivo, 1989; Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004).

EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE

Emotional competence is the ability to identify and respond to feelings and emotional

reactions in oneself and others. The W. T. Grant Consortium on the School-Based Pro-

motion of Social Competence (W. T. Grant Consortium 1992, p. 136) list of emotional

skills includes: “Identifying and labeling feelings, expressing feelings, assessing the

intensity of feelings, managing feelings, delaying gratiﬁcation, controlling impulses, and

reducing stress.” Goleman (1995) proposed empathy and hope as components of emo-

tional intelligence.

COGNITIVE COMPETENCE

Cognitive competence includes two overlapping but distinct subconstructs. The ﬁrst

relates to personal skills such as problem solving (W. T. Grant Consortium, 1992, p. 136).

The second aspect is related to academic and intellectual achievement.

BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCE

Behavioral competence refers to effective action in three dimensions: nonverbal com-

munication, verbal communication, and taking action (W. T. Grant Consortium 1992,

pp. 136–137).

MORAL COMPETENCE

Moral competence is a youth’s ability to assess and respond to the ethical, affective, or

social justice dimensions of a situation. Nucci and Turiel (Nucci, 1997, 2001; Turiel,

1983) considered fairness and welfare as central concerns for moral judgments.

Fosters Self-Efﬁcacy

Self-efﬁcacy is the perception that one can achieve desired goals within speciﬁc domains

(e.g., educational attainment) through one’s own action (Bandura, 1989, p. 1175). Given

that differences in self-efﬁcacy are commonly observed across domains (e.g., school,

sport, relationships), to offer PYD beneﬁts, high self-efﬁcacy may need to be maintained

across domains that align with valued opportunities.

Provides Opportunities for Prosocial Involvement

Opportunity for prosocial involvement is the presentation of events and activities across

different social environments that encourage youths to participate in prosocial actions.

426 s R.F. Catalano et al.

There are links between the emphasis on opportunities in PYD and the United Nations

Millennium Development goals that have established a strategy to reduce severe poverty

by ensuring basic opportunities (nutrition, education, and rights) for youth internation-

ally (United Nations, 2000, 2005).

Provides Recognition for Positive Behavior

Recognition for positive involvement is the positive response of those in the social

environment to desired behaviors by youths. Both external and intrinsic reinforcers are

generally agreed to have important inﬂuences on behavior (Akers, Krohn, Lanza-Kaduce,

& Radosevich, 1979; Bandura, 1973).

Promotes Bonding

Bonding is the emotional attachment and commitment a child makes to social rela-

tionships in the family, peer group, school, community, or culture. The importance of

bonding reaches far beyond the family. How a child establishes early bonds to care-

givers (Bowlby, 1982) will directly affect the manner in which the child later bonds to

peers, school, the community, and culture(s) (Catalano, Haggerty, Oesterle, Fleming, &

Hawkins, 2004).

Promotes Strength of Character

Positive traits like curiosity, kindness, gratitude, hope, and humor are components of

strength of character (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Fosters Self-Determination

Self-determination is the ability to think for oneself and to take instrumental action con-

sistent with that thought (Fetterman, Kaftarian, & Wandersman, 1996).

Fosters Clear and Positive Identity

Clear and positive identity is the internal organization of a coherent sense of self. The

construct is associated with the theory of identity development emerging from studies

of how children establish their identities (Erikson, 1968), including gender and ethnic

identity (Josephs, Markus, & Tafarodi, 1992; Phinney, Lochner, & Murphy, 1990).

Fosters Belief in the Future

Belief in the future is the internalization of hope and optimism about possible outcomes

(Wyman, Cowen, Work, & Kerley, 1993).

Fosters Prosocial Norms

Prosocial norms are healthy beliefs and clear standards for a variety of positive behaviors

and prohibitions against involvement in unhealthy or risky behaviors (J. D. Hawkins,

Catalano, & Miller, 1992; J. D. Hawkins et al., 1992).

Fosters Spirituality

To incorporate religiosity and nontraditional forms of applied spiritual practice, spir-

ituality is deﬁned here to include afﬁliation, belief in a transcendent hierarchy of values,

and practice relevant to both formal religion (which considers God-given values to be at

the top of the hierarchy of values) and also less formal conceptions of spirituality such

Positive Youth Development in the US s 427

as internal reﬂection and considering a transcendental hierarchy of solely humanistic

values (Berube, Jost, Severynse, & Ellis, 1995).

Promotes Life Satisfaction

Life satisfaction is the overall judgment that one’s life is a good one (Diener, Emmons,

Larsen, & Grifﬁn, 1985).

Fosters Positive Emotions

Emotions like joy, contentment, and love have been linked by research to the broadening

and building of psychological skills and abilities (Fredrickson, 2000, 2002).

Fosters Resilience

Resilience is an individual’s capacity for adapting to change and stressful events in healthy

and ﬂexible ways (Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990; Rutter, 1985).

INTERVENTION IMPLICATIONS

Identiﬁcation of youth development constructs has proven useful in deﬁning targets for

intervention, as well as understanding how youth development program components

might be structured. For example, the youth development construct of bonding suggests

that bonding to family, peers, school, and positive community members is an important

process of youth development that could be targeted by youth development interven-

tions.

However, the ﬁeld must progress beyond a listing of positive youth development con-

structs. To be most useful as a program development or structuring tool, the ability of

the youth development constructs to predict positive and problem behaviors should be

examined. Establishing predictive validity of youth development constructs provides a

stronger rationale for addressing them through intervention. Consistent, longitudinal

evidence across positive and problem behavior has not been generated for the youth

development constructs. However, recently a series of reviews has examined the longit-

udinal evidence for whether youth development constructs predict sexual and reproduc-

tive health (Gloppen, David-Ferdon, & Bates, 2010; House, Bates, Markham, & Lesesne,

2010; House, Müller, Reininger, Brown, & Markham, 2010; Markham et al., 2010). This

series of reviews found consistent longitudinal evidence for seven (cognitive and social

competence, self-efﬁcacy, belief in the future, self-determination, prosocial norms, and

spirituality) of the 13 PYD constructs examined (positive emotions, life satisfaction, resil-

ient temperament, strength of character, and behavioral competence were not examined).

This suggests that these seven PYD constructs have evidence for being promising targets

of PYD interventions to promote adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Further

reviews of the ability of the youth development constructs to predict other problem and

positive behaviors will assist PYD interventions to target malleable and predictive youth

development constructs and provide a ﬁrmer basis for PYD program development.

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT THEORY

In addition to establishing whether PYD constructs predict positive and problem behav-

ior, there is a need to tie this long list of youth developmental constructs together through

428 s R.F. Catalano et al.

theories of positive youth development (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996; Cichetti & Cohen,

1995; Lerner, 2000; Lopez & McKnight, 2002; Seligman, 2001).

While the ﬁeld of PYD is characterized by several theories of PYD, no theory pre-

dominates. Rather than review theories, we brieﬂy present our theory as an example

guide to mechanisms that produce youth development. The social development model

(SDM) (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996, 2002) is a theory of human behavior that attempts

to provide an explanation of the development of positive and problem behavior. It

recognizes that development is a product of an individual’s behavior in multiple social

environments across development. The SDM is explicitly developmental. Four develop-

mental submodels of the SDM have been speciﬁed. The same constructs are included

in each submodel, although their speciﬁc content is deﬁned differently by individual

development and changes in social environments. These developmental periods include

preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school, corresponding to major

transitions in socializing environments (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996). The developmen-

tally speciﬁc submodels have been constructed as recursive models; however, the SDM

hypothesizes reciprocal relationships between constructs across developmental periods.

The model builds on social control theory (Hirschi, 1969), social learning theory

(Bandura, 1977; Cressey, 1953), and differential association theory (Cressey, 1953; Mat-

sueda, 1988). Control theory is used to identify causal elements in the etiology of problem

and positive behavior. Social learning theory is used to identify processes by which patterns

of positive and problem behavior are learned, extinguished, or maintained. Differential

association theory is used to identify parallel but separate causal paths for prosocial and

antisocial processes. This synthetic theory pays particular attention to resolving competing

theoretical assumptions of these different theories (Catalano & Hawkins, 1996). The SDM

hypothesizes that children and youth must learn patterns of behavior, whether prosocial or

antisocial. These patterns are learned in families, schools, peer groups, and the community.

It is hypothesized that socialization follows the same processes of social learning whether it

produces positive or problem behavior. Children are socialized through processes involving

four constructs: 1) perceived opportunities for involvement in activities and interactions

with others, 2) the degree of involvement and interaction, 3) the skills to participate in these

involvements and interactions, and 4) the reinforcement they perceive from these involve-

ments and interactions (see Figure 24.1).

When socializing processes are consistent, a social bond develops between the indi-

vidual and the socializing unit. Once strongly established, the social bond has power

to effect behavior independently of the above four social learning processes. The social

bond inhibits deviant behaviors through the establishment of an individual’s “stake” in

conforming to the norms and values of the socializing unit. It is hypothesized that the

behavior of the individual will be prosocial or antisocial depending on the relative inﬂu-

ence of norms and values held by those to whom the individual is bonded. Social and

emotional bonds are only expected to inhibit antisocial behavior if those to whom a

child is bonded hold norms clearly opposed to the antisocial behavior. Individuals who

develop bonds to antisocial family, peers, or school personnel are expected to be encour-

aged to engage in antisocial behavior. Thus, two paths are hypothesized with similar

socialization processes operating, one a prosocial (protective) path, and one an antisocial

(risk) path. Both paths inﬂuence positive and antisocial behavior.

This theory weaves together several PYD concepts, including opportunities; social,

emotional, behavioral, and cognitive competencies; recognition for involvement;

Positive Youth Development in the US s 429

bonding; belief in the future; and positive norms. It brings them together in a way that

provides mechanistic links among the concepts and provides explanations for both pro-

motive and risk paths among these constructs. The latter is particularly important since

it provides caution that the PYD concepts might actually promote problem behavior

depending on whether the activities, interactions, and beliefs are prosocial or antisocial.

This theory thus takes the concepts beyond a list and provides dynamics among the

concepts and explanations for how they might work together. This type of theoretical

development is needed in the ﬁeld.

CONSENSUS ON POSITIVE BEHAVIOR OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD IS

NEEDED

While there has been consensus on problem behaviors and PYD constructs, there is less

consensus on positive behavior outcomes in adulthood. Deﬁning a limited number of

PYD outcomes would assist the ﬁeld in both theory and intervention development.

Some work has been completed in deﬁning PYD outcomes. For example, Benson,

Hawkins and colleagues (2004), deﬁned eight outcomes in young adulthood, including

physical health, psychological and emotional well-being, life skills, ethical behavior, healthy

family and social relationships, educational attainment, constructive engagement, and civic

engagement. However, one of these outcomes, life skills, overlaps with the PYD competency

constructs, thus providing seven unique youth development outcomes.

Another example of work to deﬁne positive young adult outcomes has occurred

in Australia (M. T. Hawkins, Letcher, Sanson, Smart, & Toumbourou, 2009). In addi-

tion to the outcomes identiﬁed by Benson et al. (2004), Hawkins and colleagues also

include social trust, deﬁned as respect for diversity and key societal institutions. Trust

is conceptualized as an important developmental outcome that emerges from the PYD

construct of bonding. M. T. Hawkins and colleagues’ (2009, 2011) integrative model

was found to offer a good ﬁt to data from a young adult Australian cohort. Similar

PROSOCIAL PATH

ANTISOCIAL PATH

Perceived

prosocial

opportunities

Perceived

antisocial

opportunities

Prosocial

involvement

Prosocial

involvement

Perceived

prosocial

rewards

Perceived

prosocial

rewards

Bonding to

prosocial

others

Bonding to

prosocial

others

Belief in the

moral order

Belief in

antisocial

values

Position in the

social structure:

race, SES, age,

gender

External

constraints

Individual

constitutional

factors

Problem behavior

Skills for

interaction

( + )

( - ) ( +, - )

Positive behavior

Figure 24.1 The Social Development Model: General Model.

430 s R.F. Catalano et al.

to the work of Benson et al. (2004), their model integrated constructs measuring

general life satisfaction and competence (conceived as universal individual indicators

of positive development) with constructs from social capital theories that included

civic engagement and social trust. Social trust and civic engagement have been con-

ceptualized in social capital theories to be important young adult outcomes that indi-

cate both healthy development at an individual level, but also as collective resources

contributing to the success of democratic societies. Their model of positive youth

development appeared longitudinally valid in being predicted appropriately by child

socialization and PYD indicators (O’Connor et al., 2011) and in predicting subsequent

reductions in common young adult problems in areas including mental health and

alcohol misuse, while also enhancing intimate peer relationships, physical well-being,

and positive development (M. T. Hawkins et al., 2012).

These varied efforts to better deﬁne and measure PYD outcomes are important for

improving conceptualization of the relation between PYD constructs and positive and

problem outcomes in adults. Establishing consensus on positive outcomes can provide a

ﬁrmer basis for examining the predictive validity of PYD constructs, and assist in design-

ing measures that could be added as outcomes for PYD interventions, in addition to

reducing problem behaviors. Further conceptual work needs to be completed to deﬁne

and gain consensus on PYD young adult outcomes.

POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT AND MORAL AND CHARACTER

EDUCATION

The constructs included under the umbrella of positive youth development have

emerged through consensus meetings involving scientists, practitioners, and policy-

makers synthesizing ﬁndings across the developmental, evaluation, and behavioral

sciences. These efforts have married diverse science and practice across a range of dis-

ciplines and achieved an encompassing scope in the characterization of positive youth

development such that domains that form the focus in the moral and character educa-

tion movement have been included. The moral and character education movement

shares historical similarities with many areas of positive youth development in the

youth domains that have been addressed, the interventions that have been developed

and tested, and in the challenges faced in attempting to integrate research and practice

(Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Leming, 1993). A common starting point evident in the

writing of supporters of moral and character education has been the concern that

modern socializing institutions have failed to reinforce the moral development of

children and young people (Bebeau, Rest, & Narvaez, 1999; Leming, 1993). Although

there are efforts to realign with evidence-based approaches (Institute of Education

Sciences, 2006; Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006), the moral and character education pro-

grams that are most commonly used in American schools do not appear to reﬂect the

diversity of underpinning theory and practice evident in the history of this move-

ment. Many programs utilize school curricula with the aim of encouraging a common

code of values, and, in this sense, resemble the ineffective programs developed in the

earliest period of the character education movement (Bebeau et al., 1999; Leming,

1993); systematic reviews and evaluations of programs have shown mixed effects,

with some programs demonstrating no effects (Institute of Education Sciences, 2006).

Bebeau et al. (1999) comment that the implicit theory underpinning a number of

Positive Youth Development in the US s 431

curriculum-based programs is that didactic teaching of traditional values, reinforced

with a behavioral code reﬂecting these curriculum values, will be effective in changing

both values and behavior.

The review of character education programs conducted by the Institute of Education

Sciences (2006) identiﬁed four programs that had been submitted to evaluations that at

least partly met quality evidence standards. None of the programs evaluated was found

to have impacted prosocial behavior and only one program (Building Decision Skills

combined with service learning) was found to have had potentially positive effects on

attitudes and values (Leming, 2001), while one other program (The Lessons in Charac-

ter curricula) was found to have potentially positive effects for academic achievement

(Devargas, 1999; Dietsch & Bayha, 2005; Dietsch, Bayha, & Zheng, 2005).

The growing emphasis on the evaluation of character and moral education programs

reﬂects the broader emphasis on evidence-based practice. Interest in character educa-

tion has seeded innovative programming and scientiﬁc investigation that has inﬂuenced

positive youth development programs. The failure of a number of evaluations to ﬁnd

effects for character education programs (Institute of Education Sciences, 2006) has led

to calls to better integrate the practice of character education with the lessons from the

evaluation of programs that have successfully promoted positive youth development

(Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006). One indicator of the need for more research in this area is

that the evidence available for inclusion of this approach on the Institute of Education

What Works Clearinghouse website remained effectively unchanged between July 2006

and July 2012.

EVALUATIONS OF POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS

Two systematic reviews of the unpublished and published PYD program evaluations

were conducted, one published in 2002 (Catalano, Berglund, Ryan, Lonczak, & Hawkins,

2002) and the second in 2010 (Gavin, Catalano, David-Ferdon, Gloppen, & Markham,

2010). To be included, both reviews required that program evaluations met the following

criteria:

s !DDRESSONEORMOREOFTHEPOSITIVEYOUTHDEVELOPMENTCONSTRUCTS

s )NVOLVEAUNIVERSALSAMPLEOFYOUTHNOTASAMPLESELECTEDBECAUSEOFTHEIRNEED

for treatment).

s !DDRESS AT LEAST ONE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT CONSTRUCT IN MULTIPLE SOCIALIZATION

domains, or address multiple youth development constructs in a single socializa-

tion domain, or address multiple youth development constructs in multiple

domains. Programs that addressed a single youth development construct in a

single socialization domain were excluded from these reviews.

The 2002 review included studies that:

s )NVOLVEDYOUTHBETWEENTHEAGESOFSIXANDYEARS

The 2010 review included studies that:

s )NVOLVEDYOUTHBETWEENnYEARSOFAGE

432 s R.F. Catalano et al.

In addition to these program criteria, the program’s evaluation had to meet the criteria

described below. Complete description and operationalization of these inclusion cri-

teria can be found in the two reviews.

s %XPERIMENTAL OR QUASIEXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS WITHOUT DESIGN mAWS THAT AFFECT

conclusion validity;

s !DEQUATEDESCRIPTIONOFTHERESEARCHMETHODOLOGIES

s $ESCRIPTIONOFTHEPOPULATIONSERVED

s $ESCRIPTIONOFTHEINTERVENTION

s $ESCRIPTIONOFIMPLEMENTATION

The 2002 study accepted studies with:

s %FFECTSDEMONSTRATEDONPOSITIVEORNEGATIVEBEHAVIORALOUTCOMES

The 2010 study accepted only studies with:

s %FFECTSDEMONSTRATEDONANADOLESCENTSEXUALANDREPRODUCTIVEHEALTHOUTCOME

A diverse range of programs met these selection criteria, some of which may be

described as positive youth development programs, some as health promotion pro-

grams, and others as primary prevention programs. In the 2002 review, 30 positive

youth development programs met the inclusion criteria and 25 had positive effects on

behavioral outcomes with an acceptable standard of statistical proof. In the 2010 review,

30 PYD programs met the inclusion criteria. Fifteen of the 30 programs had evidence

of improving at least one adolescent sexual and reproductive health outcome. The two

reviews included a number of the same programs.

SUMMARY OF YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM OUTCOMES

Program results are brieﬂy summarized in this section, organized by effects on positive

and negative outcomes. Illustrative references to articles describing outcomes of these

programs are provided when the program is ﬁrst mentioned. More complete descrip-

tions of the programs, research designs, behavioral outcomes, and complete references

for the programs named below are available in the 2002 and 2010 reviews (Catalano,

Berglund et al., 2002; Gavin et al., 2010).

Positive outcomes for youth in these programs included a variety of improvements in

emotional competence, including greater self-control (PATHS—Greenberg & Kusche, 1997;

Bicultural Competence Skills—Schinke, Orlandi, Botvin, Gilchrist, & Locklear, 1988); frus-

tration tolerance (Children of Divorce—Pedro-Carroll & Cowen, 1985); increased empathy

(PATHS); and expression of feelings (PATHS; Fast Track—Conduct Problems Prevention

Research Group, 2002). Improvements in social competence included interpersonal skills

(Children of Divorce; Fast Track; Child Development Project—Battistich, Schaps, Watson,

& Solomon, 1996; Life Skills Training—Botvin et al., 2000; Social Competence Promotion

Program—Weissberg & Caplan, 1998); greater assertiveness (Bicultural Competence Skills;

Children of Divorce); greater self-efﬁcacy with respect to substance use refusal (Project

Northland—Perry et al., 1996); healthy and adaptive coping in peer-pressure situations

Positive Youth Development in the US s 433

(Bicultural Competence Skills); improvements in acceptance of authority (Fast Track); and

improvements in race relations and perceptions of others from different cultural or ethnic

groups (Woodrock Youth Development Project—LoSciuto, Freeman, Harrington, Altman,

& Lanphear, 1997). Increases in cognitive competence included decision making (Life Skills

Training) and better problem solving (Children of Divorce; PATHS; Social Competence

Promotion Program). Increases in behavioral competence included better health practices

(Growing Healthy—Smith, Redican, & Olsen, 1992; Know Your Body—Walter, Vaughan,

& Wynder, 1989) and greater self-efﬁcacy around contraceptive practices (Reducing the

Risk—Kirby et al., 1991). Positive youth development programs were associated with

improvements in parental bonding and communication (Reducing the Risk; Seattle Social

Development Project—Hawkins, Catalano, Kosterman, Abbott, & Hill, 1999; Hawkins,

Kosterman, Catalano, Hill, & Abbott, 2005, 2008; High Scope Perry Preschool—Schwein-

hart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993; Schweinhart et al., 2005; Big Brothers/Big Sisters—Tierney,

Grossman, & Resch, 1995). Positive outcomes also included increased acceptance of pro-

social norms regarding substance use (Life Skills Training; Project ALERT—Ellickson &

Bell, 1990). A variety of positive school outcomes were also achieved by some youth devel-

opment programs, including higher achievement (Big Brothers/Big Sisters; High/Scope

Perry Preschool; Seattle Social Development Project; Teen Outreach—Allen, Philliber, Her-

rling, & Kuperminc, 1997; Abecedarian Project—Campbell, Ramey, Pungello, Sparling, &

Miller-Johnson, 2002; Valued Youth Partnerships—Cardenas, Montecel, Supik, & Harris,

1992; Adult Identity Mentoring—Clark et al., 2005; Success for All—Slavin, 1996); higher

school attachment (Seattle Social Development Project); increased high school attend-

ance (Big Brothers/Big Sisters; Quantum Opportunities—Hahn, Leavitt, & Aaron, 1994);

increased high school graduation (Across Ages—LoSciuto, Rajala, Townsend, & Taylor,

1996, Quantum Opportunities Program; Seattle Social Development Project; Valued

Youth Partnerships); increased postsecondary school and college attendance (Quantum

Opportunities Program; Seattle Social Development Project); and employment in adult-

hood (Abecedarian Project; High/Scope Perry Preschool). Other positive youth outcomes

included higher levels of voluntary community service (Across Ages) and use of community

services when needed (Creating Lasting Connections—Johnson et al., 1996).

Importantly, these programs reduced or prevented problem behaviors. For several

programs substance use was lower, including alcohol or drug use (Abecederian Project;

Bicultural Competence Skills; Big Brothers/Big Sisters; Child Development Project;

High/Scope Perry Preschool; Life Skills Training; Project ALERT; Project Northland;

Seattle Social Development Project; Woodrock Youth Development Project; Adolescent

Sibling Pregnancy Prevention—East, Kiernan, & Chavez, 2003; Aban Aya—Flay, Graum-

lich, Segawa, Burns, & Holliday, 2004; Staying Connected with Your Teen—Haggerty,

Skinner, MacKenzie, & Catalano, 2007; Gatehouse Project—Patton et al., 2006; Midwest-

ern Prevention Project—Pentz et al., 1994; Familias Unidas—Prado et al., 2007; Wolchik

et al., 2007; New Beginnings—Wolchik et al., 2002) and tobacco use (Child Development

Project; Growing Healthy; Know Your Body; Life Skills Training; Midwestern Preven-

tion Project; Project ALERT; Project Northland; Woodrock Youth Development Project).

Several programs reduced delinquency and aggression (Aban Aya; Adolescent Trans-

itions Program; Big Brothers/Big Sisters; Gatehouse Project; High/Scope Perry Preschool;

Fast Track; PATHS; Seattle Social Development Project; Social Competence Promotion

Program; Staying Connected with Your Teen; Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways—

Farrell & Meyer, 1997; Metropolitan Area Child Study—Guerra, Eron, Huesmann, Tolan,

434 s R.F. Catalano et al.

& Van Acker, 1997; Reach for Health—O’Donnell et al., 1999; O’Donnell et al., 2002).

Youth contraception practices increased, and initiation and prevalence of sexual activ-

ity were reduced in multiple programs (Aban Aya; Adult Identity Mentoring; Familias

Unidas; Gatehouse Project; Reach for Health; Reducing the Risk; Seattle Social Devel-

opment Project; Staying Connected with Your Teen; Keepin’ it REAL—DiIorio et al.,

2006; DiIorio et al., 2002; Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention—East et al., 2003;

CAS-Carrera Program—Philliber, Kaye, Herrling, & West, 2002; Teen Incentives Pro-

gram—Smith, 1994). Teen pregnancy was reduced by several programs (Abecedarian

Project; Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention; CAS-Carrera Program; High/Scope

Perry Preschool; Teen Outreach; Seattle Social Development Project). Negative school

outcomes were reduced, including truancy (Adolescent Sibling Pregnancy Prevention;

Big Brothers/Big Sisters) and school suspension (Adult Identity Mentoring; Responding

in Peaceful and Positive Ways).

CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

PROGRAMS

Summary of the characteristics of the effective positive youth development programs

across the two reviews is instructive.

Youth Development Constructs

Both reviews showed consistency in the youth development constructs addressed by efﬁ-

cacious programs. At least two thirds of the efﬁcacious youth development programs

addressed some form of competence, opportunities for prosocial involvement, recogni-

tion for positive behavior, and bonding; and at least 40% of the efﬁcacious well-evalu-

ated programs addressed positive identity, self-efﬁcacy, self-determination, belief in the

future, and prosocial norms.

Program Frequency and Duration

Twenty (80%) efﬁcacious programs in the 2002 review were delivered over a period of

nine months or more and two-thirds of the efﬁcacious programs in the 2010 review had

this duration.

Program Implementation and Assurance of Implementation Quality

Fidelity of program implementation is one of the most important topics in the positive

youth development ﬁeld. The efﬁcacious positive youth development programs reviewed

here consistently attended to the quality and consistency of program implementation.

POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM CONCLUSIONS

We found a wide range of positive youth development approaches that resulted in pro-

moting positive youth behavior outcomes and preventing youth problem behaviors.

Thirty-seven programs showed either positive changes in youth behavior, including

signiﬁcant improvements in interpersonal skills, quality of peer and adult relationships,

self-control, problem solving, cognitive competencies, self-efﬁcacy, commitment to

schooling, and academic achievement; or signiﬁcant improvements in problem behav-

iors, including drug and alcohol use, school misbehavior, aggressive behavior, violence,

Positive Youth Development in the US s 435

truancy, high-risk sexual behavior, and smoking. This is good news indeed. Promotion

and prevention programs that address positive youth development constructs are deﬁ-

nitely making a difference in well-evaluated studies.

Although a broad range of strategies produced these results, the themes common

to success involved methods to strengthen social, emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and

moral competencies; shape messages from family and community about clear stand-

ards for youth behavior; increase healthy bonding with adults, peers, and younger chil-

dren; expand opportunities and recognition for youth; and intervene with youth for nine

months or more.

IMPLICATIONS OF EVALUATIONS OF POSITIVE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT

PROGRAMS FOR MORAL AND CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

PROGRAMS

The constructs addressed by effective positive youth development programs provide

some conﬁrmation of character and moral development program elements as well as

some potential extensions. While these youth development constructs were not tested

individually, their presence in effective positive youth development programs is sugges-

tive of their importance. It appears that addressing multiple positive youth development

constructs was associated with positive program impact. However, for the ﬁeld to most

efﬁciently develop now, we suggest that a relatively small set of positive outcomes in

young adults be agreed upon, and call for more studies demonstrating that these PYD

constructs are predictive of a range of positive and negative outcomes. Both directions

would assist in progressing the research, program development, and ultimately the effec-

tiveness of PYD programs.

In sum, there is clear evidence from well-conducted trials that positive youth devel-

opment programs can be effective. Many of the elements of character and moral devel-

opment have been included in the programs reviewed here. Cross-fertilization of

programming and theory could lead to improvements in our understanding of youth

development.

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441

COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTION TO MORAL AND

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Constance Flanagan, Alisa Pykett, and Erin Gallay

In approaching the topic of community contribution to moral and character develop-

ment, we begin with the observations of some prominent political scientists who have

challenged rational choice models of human behavior (i.e., that people will make deci-

sions in their own self-interest with little regard for the common good). In their book,

Voice and Equality, Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) note that rational choice theory

predicts that few people will be active in community affairs when, in fact, many are.

Indeed, people contribute to the common good of their communities because there is

a sense of satisfaction from “performing a civic duty or doing one’s share to make the

community, nation, or world a better place” (p. 10).

In a similar vein, Elinor Ostrom (1998), winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in eco-

nomics, challenged the notion that states or markets were better than communities of

people in determining how best to manage natural resources. She contested the inevi-

tability of a “tragedy of the commons” which assumed that, driven by self-interest,

people would destroy and deplete the natural resources on which their community

depended. Rather, Ostrom (2010) and her colleagues demonstrated empirically that

communities throughout the world use collective decision-making processes to

determine how to sustain environmental resources that are their commons. In her

Nobel Prize lecture, she contended that humans have more capability and complex

motivation to solve social dilemmas than suggested in rational choice theory. Fur-

thermore, this recognition calls for creating policies and institutions that bring out

the best in humans as opposed to policies that force individuals, assumed to be driven

by self-interest, into behaviors for the common interest. Aspects of community insti-

tutions and policies that enable people to freely choose to act in the interests of the

commons include extending the breadth of communication to include all particip-

ants, possibilities for collective efﬁcacy and the sense among participants that their

contributions have an impact, cooperation and trust among participants, and a long-

term horizon.

442 s C. Flanagan et al.

The focus for our chapter is on the potential of a community as a commons to con-

tribute to moral development. We begin with a discussion of the commons and an argu-

ment about the potential of community-based organizations for contributing to moral

development. Following that we discuss the processes underlying moral development in

community-based organizations: Drawing primarily from research on youth, we claim

that moral selves form through feelings of membership in and identiﬁcation with a com-

munity of mutual obligations. Further, we argue that moral development beneﬁts when

the community extends beyond familiar others and includes a diversity of backgrounds,

experiences, and perspectives. In the third section we discuss the moral foundations

of environmental action in communities, focusing on such things as interdependence,

empathy, and generative concern.

COMMUNITY/THE COMMONS

Often, mention of “the commons” elicits an image of the village green where people

brought their sheep to graze—an image that may not appear, on the surface, to hold

relevance in current times. However, an updated conceptualization of the commons as

the public space where people come together, form relationships and group identities,

and develop feelings of social responsibility, is useful for a discussion of moral devel-

opment in community settings. The commons serves as a symbol for understanding

the world as interdependent and the need for people to engage in what Harry Boyte

(2011) has called public work in order to make it better. Elinor Ostrom’s (2010) explana-

tion of the commons distinguished tangible (common pool resources, like ﬁsheries and

forests) from intangible public goods such as peace, security, and knowledge. Others

have described the modern commons as: the image that stands behind the concept of the

common good (Parks, 2000), the “symbolic and material foundations for a shared life”

(Boyte, 2011, p. 638), and “a place where the diverse parts of a community could come

together and hold a conversation within a shared sense of participation and responsib-

ility” (Daloz, Keen, Keen, & Parks, 1996, p. 2).

The commons is where we build and experience our shared lives. In communities we

create something together—with others whose lives and experiences extend beyond the

narrower range within one’s family and close friends. The very word “community” means

the gift of coming together. As moral theorists have argued, it is the coming together in

relationships, identifying with a group and its values, and feelings of responsibility for

the group that underlies the formation of a moral self (Power, 2004). Youniss (2009)

takes the argument a step further: People engage in moral action by working with others

in community-based institutions and those organizations have a history, ideology, and

professed sets of values that informs the work that they do. Thus, in choosing to work

with a particular community organization, people deepen and extend the reach of the

values for which that organization stands.

Many moral questions reside in the commons: What are my roles and responsibil-

ities in this complex, diverse, and global commons that is comprised of people like

me and people very different than me? What is our shared purpose? What might we

create together? The commons also contains the practical concerns of managing shared

resources, addressing social problems, and making community decisions. People create

their public, shared lives in the commons as they learn about each other, support one

another, celebrate, struggle, and grieve. Compared to the village green from earlier

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 443

conceptualizations, the new commons is, as Daloz et al. (1996) have noted, “global in

scope, diverse in character, and dauntingly complex” (p. 2).

For this reason alone, moral development nurtured in community groups cannot be

construed as teaching young people what is true or how they should think. Rather, in the

repeated acts of wrangling with others over how to live in a civil society, youth should

gain skills for handling morally complex issues that will be increasingly common in their

lives. As Nucci (2008) has noted, with the complexity of moral decision-making and cre-

ating a moral life, “what we can hope to accomplish is to develop young people capable

of handling moral complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction in ways that will help them

to lead moral lives and to construct a better moral society” (p. 305).

Participating in the new commons, or working for the common good, requires an

awareness of the interdependencies that are facts of life, from recognizing at a basic level

that the piece of trash one throws in the river could kill an animal and, as a result, cause

the death of its offspring, to recognizing at a more complex level that the company in

one’s town—a major employer of, among others, members of one’s family—is pollut-

ing the river, impacting people who make their living ﬁshing and those eating the ﬁsh in

towns downstream.

A mature moral identity is capable of recognizing, grappling with, and working with

others to identify and address injustice (Blum, 1999; Daloz et al., 1996; Parks, 2000). The

commons framework provides a language to discuss morality and responsibility in a

shared life without using an exclusive religious language, which would inevitably include

some and exclude others in the moral conversation. In fact, unique to the commons or

what the philosopher Hannah Arendt referred to as the “public realm” is the fact that

it brings everyone, regardless of status, social background, or beliefs, together. Thus,

the public realm is a more diverse context for moral identity formation than the more

homogeneous settings of family life.

In her book, The Human Condition, Arendt (1958) provides several mechanisms

whereby activity in the public realm could contribute to moral development: ﬁrst the

term “public” means that things that appear in this realm can be seen and heard by

everybody. Consequently, in the public realm there will be diversity in perspectives of

what constitutes moral, ethical, virtuous behavior. Although people will choose different

ways to live their own private lives, it is in the public realm that a wide range of beliefs on

how best to live together in a civil society can be aired and debated.

Second, according to Arendt, the public realm is the common world that gathers us

together; when we realize our personal stake in the common good, we are motivated to

act in the interests of the whole. Further, the inclusive nature of the public realm should

expand our moral community. As theologian Ronald Marstin (1979) has argued,

issues of social justice are essentially about who is to be cared for and who neglected,

who is to be included in our community of concern and who excluded, whose point

of view is to be taken seriously and whose ignored.

(p. 37)

As people develop morally and have experiences that broaden their boundaries of com-

munity, they can develop a critical consciousness about how some are cared for,

included, and taken seriously while others are neglected, excluded, and ignored. For

some, this critical consciousness will motivate actions to redress disparities and

444 s C. Flanagan et al.

challenge what they perceive as an unjust system (Marstin, 1979; Watts, Diemer, &

Voight, 2011).

Third, action in the common world transcends individual life spans. In fact, Arendt

(1958) considered the intergenerational responsibilities in the public realm the very

means whereby human beings overcame the fact of their mortality.

The common world is what we enter when we are born and what we leave behind

when we die. It transcends our life span into past and future alike; it was there before

we came and will outlast our brief sojourn into it. It is what we have in common not

only with those who live with us, but also with those who were here before and with

those who will come after us. But such a common world can survive the coming and

going of the generations only to the extent that it appears in public. It is the publicity

of the public realm which can absorb and make shine through the centuries what-

ever men may want to save from the natural ruin of time. Through many ages before

us—but now not any more—men entered the public realm because they wanted

something of their own or something they had in common with others to be more

permanent than their earthly lives.

(p. 50)

MINI-POLITIES IN MANAGEABLE FRAMES

A conceptual discussion on the commons, justice, and moral development elicits ques-

tions about processes. How do people get initiated into the interdependent commons,

feel at home there, value it, and develop an identity as a member, especially in an Ameri-

can society that stresses individualist values? The answers lie in processes of wrangling

in real life communities.

Dewey addressed such questions in The Public and Its Problems (1927) where he argued

that the concept of democracy and community is utopian and consequently meaning-

less, until people deﬁne it through communication and actions with one another in con-

crete (and not neat and tidy) community settings:

Only when we start from a community as a fact, grasp the fact in thought so as to

clarify and enhance its constituent elements, can we reach an idea of democracy

which is not utopian. The conceptions and shibboleths which are traditionally asso-

ciated with the idea of democracy take on a veridical and directive meaning only

when they are construed as marks and traits of an association which realizes the

deﬁning characteristics of a community. Fraternity, liberty, and equality isolated

from communal life are hopeless abstractions.

(p. 142)

In other words, democracy itself and the ideals of liberty and equality are utopian—

abstract and meaningless—until people give them deﬁnition through the commitments

they form on the ground. Dewey argues that it is through communication, through

getting to know and bond with one another, that we create a sense of the public and

transform local community experiences into what he called the “Great Community.”

He writes, “Without such communication the Public will remain in eclipse. Communi-

cation can alone create a great community” (p. 142).

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 445

In line with Dewey’s emphasis on the constituent elements of real world communities,

we emphasize that young people’s understanding of society and of their rights and

responsibilities as citizens of societies are interpreted and ﬁltered through what we have

referred to as mediating institutions (schools; extracurricular activities; faith-based, cul-

tural, and other community-based organizations). These mediating institutions provide

people with an opportunity to experience and participate in the commons in what Parks

(2000) calls manageable frames—concrete entry-points to the abstract notion of the

commons. In other work we have referred to these spaces as mini-polities to emphasize

the fact that it is through the experiences and relationships they forge in these local,

proximal contexts that teens formulate ideas about their membership, rights, and obliga-

tions as citizens in the broader polity (Flanagan, 2013). Other scholars have used terms

such as the micro experience of the commons (Parks, 2000) or the “mini-publics” of

deliberative democracy processes (Fung, 2003). Whatever terms we use the main point is

that people’s (and we emphasize youths’) concepts of themselves as citizens, as members

of the body politic, are built up via their memberships in groups and institutions— peer

groups, schools, community-based institutions—spaces where they enact what it means

to be part of a group, that is, exercise the prerogatives and assume the responsibilities of

membership in the group.

PROCESSES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN COMMUNITY-BASED

ORGANIZATIONS

In general, research has not speciﬁcally focused on the potential of youth participa-

tion in extracurricular or community-based programs for moral or character educa-

tion. However, reviews of an extensive body of work conﬁrm strong positive associations

between such participation and developmental outcomes including psychological adjust-

ment, lower rates of smoking and drug use, and higher quantity and quality of interac-

tions with one’s parents (Mahoney, Harris, & Eccles, 2006).

Other work shows that participation in community groups in one’s youth predicts

civic participation (voting, volunteering, joining and leading community groups) in

adulthood (Duke, Skay, Pettingell, & Borowsky, 2009), suggesting that an ethic of civic

participation or of social responsibility to the community is nurtured through such

involvement. An ethic of social responsibility reﬂects values that transcend narrow self-

interest. According to Schwartz’s (1992, 2009) circumplex model, self-transcending

values (benevolence and universalism) diverge from those at the opposite end of the

continuum, i.e., self-enhancing values (power and achievement). Benevolence refers

to values reﬂecting proactive responses to others that build relationships (e.g., loyalty,

responsibility, honesty, kindness) and universalism to values that promote a more inclu-

sive, peaceful world that protects all living things. In studies of late adolescents and young

adults, these very self-transcending values as well as the youths’ moral self-ideals increase

as a result of their community involvement (Pratt, Hunsberger, Pancer, & Alisat, 2003).

We suggest several mechanisms that might explain why engagement in community-

based organizations (CBOs) in one’s youth may lead to self-transcending values and

to lives of civic engagement in adulthood. First, CBOs provide a structured outlet for

leisure time including a pro-social reference group of peers and adult mentors. Typic-

ally the latter (adults) are models of civic behavior insofar as many are volunteering

their time to the organization. CBOs also ﬁll the niche in the after school hours from

446 s C. Flanagan et al.

3:00–6:00 p.m. when many juvenile misdemeanors occur. These programs play a role in

informal social control insofar as youth who participate in structured youth groups, par-

ticularly those that engage them in community service, are less likely to be involved in

antisocial activities or substance abuse in later years (Barber, Eccles, & Stone, 2001). But

the mechanism whereby CBOs contribute to later civic engagement goes beyond their

role in keeping youth out of trouble.

As Verba et al. (1995) found in their study of adults, the very fact of being in a com-

munity organization increases the likelihood that one will be invited to join others. For

youth, participating in a CBO increases the likelihood of recruitment into more com-

munity activities including activities such as community service. In other words, being

in a CBO sets youth on a developmental pathway of continuing civic engagement. Moral

development occurs in these settings through processes of informal social control, of

negotiating shared moral norms with fellow members of one’s community and with

pro-social reference groups, of exposure to and engagement with a wider set of perspec-

tives and people, and with a sense of social responsibility for that broader community of

others.

Second, involvement in community organizations satisﬁed the human need to belong

(Baumeister & Leary, 1995). The emotional ties to a community where young people

feel that they belong are a foundation for nurturing morality. When young people feel

wanted, feel that they count in the affairs of the community, they are less likely to violate

its norms. In fact, youths’ sense of “mattering” to others in the organization has been

identiﬁed as the sine qua non of effective community-based youth organizations (Eccles

& Gootman, 2001).

In contrast, the absence of such affective ties is considered a problem for the individual

and for the community as well; we use terms like disaffected or alienated to capture that

disconnect. The notion of reconnecting youth into the web of community relations is

the thesis underlying restorative justice practices with juvenile offenders. Practices such

as victim-offender mediation, community service, and conﬂict resolution are designed

to repair relationships, to restore the youth’s membership in the community through

socially responsible actions. But it is not only the young offender who engages in repara-

tion. Community members also are made aware of ways that they could make the youth

feel more included (Bazemore & Walgrave, 1999). The focus here is less on youth break-

ing a law and more on the break from the community that needs repair. In contrast to

a retributive framework in which the juvenile offender is held accountable to the state,

restorative justice practices emphasize his/her obligation to repair the harm done to

victims and to the broader community.

Developing the democratic dispositions of youth is a third way in which the

routine practices of CBOs contribute to moral and character development. Concepts

and beliefs about the self and society—about what does and what should occur—ﬂow

from participating with others in these routine practices (Goodnow, Miller, & Kessel,

1995). CBOs provide their members opportunities to work towards goals that are col-

lectively deﬁned in a context where the status of all members is relatively equal. When

they engage in group projects, peers hold one another accountable to the group: If

you promise to help, you had better show up or risk the likelihood that you will lose

face in the eyes of your peers. Virtues of loyalty, team spirit, trust, and trustwor-

thiness, dispositions that are foundational for citizenship, are nourished (Flanagan,

2004).

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 447

The political scientist C. Douglas Lummis (1996) notes that, not only do we learn

about trust but that we also become trustworthy persons through the repeated commit-

ments and honoring of promises we make to fellow human beings. Relations of trust

are established in the web of human relations by thousands of promises and con-

tracts, some explicit but most not, which people make in their daily dealings with

one another over the years and over generations. Trust is not morality, but it pro-

duces virtuous behavior and virtuous persons.

(p. 145)

Alluding to the social contract that binds members of a civil society together,

Lummis adds that

the act of making and keeping a promise is a conquest of the chaos that would come

if each of us followed our individual passions from moment to moment wherever

they lead. It is a conquest that establishes order without placing humankind under a

punishing God, a punishing leviathan, a punishing conscience, or a punishing order

of exploitative work.

(p. 146)

In sum, keeping promises (i.e., keeping faith with one another) may be a means by

which teens learn what it means to be part of a commons and about the ties that bind

them to fellow members of their community.

A fourth way in which CBOs contribute to the moral and character development of

younger generations is by developing their connections and relationships with adults

who themselves are committed to the commons. In fact, positive relationships between

adults and adolescents increase and negative group stereotypes break down when ado-

lescents and adults work on shared issues in community-based youth programs (Jarrett,

Sullivan, & Watkins, 2005; Zeldin, Camino, & Mook, 2005).

Activation of group identities. The process of moral identity formation in CBOs

depends on the extent to which youth identify with the organization or group. But how

does such group identity formation come about? According to social identity theory

(Tajfel, 1981) one’s social identity is the part of one’s self-concept that derives from the

knowledge of belonging to a group and the value and emotional attachment associated

with being a member of that group. When a group identity is salient, moral develop-

ment is shaped by norms about who “we” are and how “we” act (Thomas & Lewis, 2013).

Furthermore, informal social control and peer pressure to conform will affect behav-

ior within the group. Since collective action enhances well-being (Klar & Kasser, 2009),

group identities will be reinforced. When people identify with a group and internalize

its norms, they not only conform to those norms but also believe that choosing behavior

consistent with the group is an authentic, freely chosen decision rather than a constraint

on free will (Amiot, Sansfacon, Louis, & Yelle, 2011).

Discussions within a group reinforce the group’s identity and increase the likelihood

that members will engage in collective action. Discussions also increase the likelihood that

people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives will ﬁnd common ground (Thomas

& Louis, 2013). In our own work with adolescents, we found that peer discussions in

which different perspectives were aired and respected, increased adolescents’ sense of

448 s C. Flanagan et al.

group solidarity. Over the period of a year, these group processes increased youths’ social

trust or faith in humanity (Flanagan & Stout, 2010).

Our very standards for personal moral action and our beliefs about what consti-

tutes a just world are shaped by the groups with which we identify. Hatano and Taka-

hashi (2005) make this point when they contrast cognition about the natural world

with societal cognition, arguing that, in the latter, “ ‘how the entity is’ is almost always

associated with ‘how it should be’ ” (pp. 290, 291). Morality itself is intertwined with

our thinking about society, and Hatano and Takahashi contend that the nurturing

of children’s societal cognition is inevitably accompanied by emotions and morality.

Ultimately, our theories about a moral and just community are not objective truths

but are entangled with our affection for and allegiance to the groups with which we

identify.

TYPES OF COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

We have noted common processes in community-based organizations that ﬁgure in the

role they play as contexts for moral and character development. Next we turn to a discus-

sion of two features of CBOs that differ with respect to the opportunities they afford for

moral and character development—the degree to which they involve public action and

the degree to which the CBO and its work exposes youth to a homogeneous or hetero-

geneous mix of others.

Public action. We know that opportunities for developing civic identities and com-

mitments vary based on the kinds of community activities in which youth engage. For

example, longitudinal analyses following a US sample of adolescents into young adulthood

showed that involvement in community service, political action, and public perform-

ance in adolescence predicted voting, volunteering, and joining community organiza-

tions in adulthood (McFarland & Thomas, 2006). The authors point to the public quality

of the adolescent activities of community service, political action, and public perform-

ance. Their reference to the public quality of these activities echoes Arendt’s discussion of

the public realm—where one’s activities gain meaning because they are seen and heard

by everyone. We would take this point a step further to note that, in the course of their

actions in public, youth are engaged in the commons and are developing identities as

members of the public.

Diversity. The potential for moral development in the community or public realm

also depends on the extent to which experiences there meet the standards that Dewey

(1916) posed for evaluating the democratic character of associations, i.e., how numerous

and varied were the interests shared by members of a group and how full and free was

the interplay of the group and its members with other groups. In other words, opportun-

ities for moral development in community organizations are enhanced by the diversity

of backgrounds and perspectives represented in the group. Diversity in groups may even

motivate members to engage in more action for the common good.

Several studies have pointed to positive relationships between the diversity of a group

and the civic commitments of its members. For example, in their in-depth interviews

with 100 adults selected for their persistent involvement in community work, Daloz and

colleagues (1996) point to what they refer to as an “enlarged engagement with the other”

as the most important and consistent factor motivating commitments to the common

good:

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 449

We had not anticipated this ﬁnding, but early in the study as people told us their

stories, we began to hear about important encounters with others signiﬁcantly dif-

ferent from themselves. On the surface, the forms of difference were variable. But

when we examined this pattern more closely, the differences that were signiﬁcant

in the formation of commitment to the common good were differences deﬁned by

“tribe.”

(p. 63)

In two of our own studies of adolescents’ and young adults’ commitment to the

commons we also have noted the value of diversity in boosting young people’s civic

commitments. In the ﬁrst study, we compared adolescents’ perceptions of their local

community, contrasting youth who had engaged in community service with peers who

had participated in other forms of extracurricular activities. The most negative percep-

tions of fellow community members were voiced by those youth who had not engaged

in either form of group activity. That is, adolescents were least likely to report that

people in their community worked together to solve problems if the youth themselves

were uninvolved in community affairs (either through extracurricular or community

service work). But the most positive reports of the community’s collective efﬁcacy, i.e.,

the capacity of ordinary people to trust one another and work together to address the

community’s problems, were reported by those youth who engaged in community

service. Their reports were more positive when compared to their peers who engaged

only in extracurricular activities. In addition, adolescents’ open-ended reports about

what they had learned from engaging in community service pointed to its potential to

diversify the networks of others with whom they interact. Challenging group stereo-

types and realizing the interdependence and mutual obligations that bind members of

communities together were common themes in the youths’ responses.

We concluded that, in contrast to the more homogeneous interest-based groups that

characterize most extracurricular clubs, community service offers adolescents oppor-

tunities to explore (individual and collective) identity with a more heterogeneous group

of people in their community—people who may differ from them in age, ethnicity, reli-

gion, or social class. Consequently, it has the potential for extending their relationships

with and understanding of others as well as the boundaries of the community for which

they feel responsible (Flanagan, Kim, Collura, & Kopish, in press).

In a second study we looked at the elements of AmeriCorps national service pro-

grams that boosted the civic engagement of members over a period of one year. Based

on baseline and post program data collected from a national sample of participants,

we found that Corps members’ reports of diversity in their experience (i.e., working

with fellow Corps and community members who were from backgrounds different

from their own) was the most signiﬁcant predictor of increases in civic engagement

(participation in community-based meetings and events, joining organizations that

supported issues they cared about, voicing their views on issues via media or at public

meetings, voting, and keeping informed about current events) over the one-year

period. In addition, for those youth whose families had earned less than the median

household income at the time the data were collected, civic engagement increased if

the Corps member felt a sense of community in the AmeriCorps program, i.e., that s/

he was part of a community and that s/he had made a contribution to that community

(Flanagan, Gallay, & Kim, 2012).

450 s C. Flanagan et al.

In summary, we would argue that moral development is linked to an increasing under-

standing of society and one’s relationship to others and the larger world—it depends on

understanding one’s role in the commons. The notion of the commons, and the sense

of responsibility and care that accompanies it, compels one to notice and respond to the

injustice that exists in one’s community. The scope of the community with which one

identiﬁes—who is identiﬁed as part of the “we”—grows wider with more varied experi-

ences, especially when grounded in intentional engagement with people and perspec-

tives that differ from one’s own.

THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT: OUR COMMONS

In this ﬁnal section, we turn to a discussion of the moral imperative of environmental

action and of the unique possibilities for moral development afforded by an understanding

of the environment as our commons through work in community-based organizations.

Climate change is arguably the biggest global challenge facing younger generations

with implications for the very necessities of life. For example, water quality and avail-

ability is a major global public health concern that is likely to raise signiﬁcant moral ques-

tions in coming decades. Is water a public good or can it be privatized? Does everyone

deserve access to clean water and how should they get it? Regardless of where they live,

there are profound implications of climate change for the decisions about consumption

and lifestyle and the very deﬁnitions of well-being and success for younger generations

(Giddens, 2009). Even the most optimistic scenarios of lowering carbon emissions and

greenhouse gas temperatures suggest that major changes in lifestyles, values, and orien-

tations of one’s interests with those of a broader community will be needed.

Environmental issues have local, regional, and global manifestations, which give them

a distinct moral advantage insofar as they lend themselves to the links between personal,

local behavior and public, regional, and global cumulative impact. Environmental issues

are, in fact, moral issues. Natural resources are essential for the survival of life on earth,

so it is everyone’s responsibility to preserve them and ensure they are maintained at an

adequate level of quality to sustain life. As the environment is something we all share, it

is part of a global commons.

A small but growing body of scholarship points to the moral foundations of environ-

mental action. For example, research with young people across culturally and economic-

ally diverse communities shows that youth have a rich and diverse appreciation for nature

and a moral responsiveness to it that extends beyond local community threats such as

pollution (Kahn, 2003). Motivations to protect the natural world have both anthropo-

centric (based on its value to humans) and biocentric (nature has intrinsic value in and

of itself ) bases (Persing, 2007). Children as young as ﬁrst grade employ both types of

arguments in their environmental moral reasoning. Across diverse cultures young peo-

ple’s moral reasoning about the environment includes arguments about using nature as

well as about the intrinsic value of nature and respect for living things (Kahn, 2003).

Compared to the research on youth, there is a larger body of work on the moral

foundations of environmental action in adulthood. According to two meta-analyses of

research with adults conducted 20 years apart, pro-environmental behavior is associated

with moral dispositions and motivations including awareness of one’s interdependence

with other people and species and responsibility for the commons (Bamberg & Moser,

2007; Hines, Hungerford, & Tomera, 1986/87). These moral dispositions are identiﬁed

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 451

as consistent psychosocial determinants of responsible environmental behavior. Other

work shows that environmental action is correlated with generative concern in parents

and adolescents—in their personal lifestyle decisions and in collective actions with

groups to effect environmental policies (Pratt, Norris, Alisat, & Bisson, 2012).

Environmental concern is tied to a person’s notion of self and the degree to which

people deﬁne themselves as independent, interdependent with other people, or inter-

dependent with all living things. Consistent with our argument about the role of group

identities in the development of moral selves, scholars have focused on the role of an

environmental identity underlying the moral motivation to transcend self-interest and

preserve the environment in the interests of other people, species, and future generations

(Schultz, 2001). An environmental identity has been described as a sense of belonging or

connection to something larger than oneself, including the nonhuman world (Arnocky,

Stroink, & De Cicco, 2007) and is correlated with the degree to which an individual associ-

ates with nature (Dutcher, Finley, Luloff, & Johnson, 2007). Whether for anthropocentric

or biocentric reasons, an environmental identity reﬂects a belief that the environment is

important to us as well as an important part of who we are. The psychological role of an

environmental identity is similar to that of other collective identities—providing a sense

of connection to a larger whole (Clayton, 2003).

Lacking an awareness of our interdependencies with other persons and species is a major

reason why moral standards may not be activated in behavior. In fact, selective moral disen-

gagement—a failure to identify with and take responsibility for the commons—underpins

environmental degradation (Bandura, 2007). Moral disengagement from environmental

responsibility occurs, in part, due to the phenomenon of “free riding,” i.e., people absolve

themselves of personal responsibility out of beliefs that “others” are taking care of the problem

or because consumption of material goods has become so integral to people’s identities and

ways of life. In turn, consumer behaviors (and consciences) can be manipulated through

“greenwashing” practices that convince the public that products are more eco-friendly than

they actually are, creating false ethical reasons for their purchase.

Engagement in environmental community action projects can combat this disen-

gagement in young people through two practices of progressive education outlined by

John Dewey—hands-on learning about real world issues and work with fellow members

of one’s community. In environmental action projects, students are actively engaged in

real-world issues through hands-on learning. Issues that students identify and tackle in

collaboration with community groups are generally complex and thus require the exper-

tise and perspectives of a diverse group of stakeholders.

In this model of environmental community action, young people are exposed to dif-

fering points of view and learn that everyone’s opinion and interest must be considered.

In order to take concrete action that is a staple of these projects, deliberation as to the

course of action must take place with consideration of the views of those on all sides of

the issue. Young people can be active citizens through all parts of the process. The sense

that they can get things done in their community if they work together can lead to a

validation of commitment to collective work for common good.

The value of collective action is another lesson that youth learn. Solutions take time

and require the commitments of many individual citizens working together to achieve a

common goal. Because young people work on these projects in partnership with CBOs,

gaining from the expertise and experience of adults in their community, they learn that

they are not alone in solving environmental issues. Through collective action addressing

452 s C. Flanagan et al.

common issues with members of their community, youth also gain a sense of the moral

commitment of their fellow citizens. In this way, the meaning of “the commons” and the

joint responsibility to preserve it deepens for the youth involved.

At the same time environmental projects lend themselves to consideration of larger

issues. For example, nonpoint source pollution of a watershed is affected by the actions

of many institutions and citizens in a large geographical area. There is not a single source

to point to from which pollution originates; rather there are multiple contributors from

many jurisdictions, all of which have both local and larger regional impact. Young people

learn that it may not be fair or just, but it is the reality that outside forces have a great

impact on everyday lives in local communities.

We believe that environmental community action projects are well suited to con-

tribute to moral development both because such projects are easily accessible to young

people and because of the unique features of such projects. Environmental community

action projects are those that put young people into direct contact with the environment

and ask them to work with others in their community to solve a local environmental

problem or issue. Through these projects, young people can come to identify themselves

as members of the public, see natural resources as public or shared resources, gain skills

and dispositions that enable them to work collectively with others, and develop the

motivation and commitment to act (Gallay & Flanagan, 2012).

As we noted earlier, Elinor Ostrom’s (2010) description of the commons included

both common pool resources and public goods. Aldo Leopold (1948) famously took

the concept of common good and community further, to include “the land”: soil, water,

plants, and animals collectively. He recognized that ethical behavior ultimately was

rooted in people’s awareness of their interdependence: “All ethics evolved so far rest

upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdepend-

ent parts” (p. 204).

If awareness of the interdependence of human beings is part of the development of

a moral self, environmental projects with community organizations are well suited for

the challenge. Interdependence is a fundamental scientiﬁc concept within and between

biological and physical environments as well as a key idea in the study of ecology. Eco-

systems cannot survive or ﬂourish unless all members of the community are in balance.

Moral and ethical questions are logical extensions of these scientiﬁc concepts.

Through environmental projects, young people learn that their everyday actions have

everyday (and cumulative) implications for the well-being of others whom they may never

see. Because the environment is not circumscribed and an action in one space affects life

and well-being in another (i.e., water pollution ﬂowing downstream, etc.), “others” affected

by our actions include other communities down river, other nations, peoples, and species

(Gallay & Flanagan, 2012). The slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all” is apt because

of the ripple effects of environmental damage. Indeed, the very meaning of “community”

is extended in environmental work insofar as the community isn’t deﬁned by political

boundaries or property lines. A river ﬂows through many towns, counties, states, etc. . . .

Watersheds observe only the boundaries of natural features, not of politics. Environmental

issues affect not just the local area, not just Americans, not even just human beings. In this

way, environmental community action projects can help students gain an awareness of the

idea of global citizenship, of empathy, and responsibility for a wide range of “others.”

Interdependence also is implicated in the solutions to environmental issues. No one

individual or group can address environmental preservation alone. Environmental

Community Contribution to Moral Development s 453

groups have to work with others—coalitions need to form, stakeholders need to be

brought to the table. Collective action is taken for a common good.

Protecting the commons, these public goods and spaces, even has a speciﬁc connec-

tion to generativity in environmental work. Environmental community action projects

are often aimed at long-term goals, as sustainability is a core concept of ecology. Young

people are introduced to the idea that the actions they are taking beneﬁt their future,

as well as the future of generations that come after them. This has moral development

implications because youth are thinking of the well-being of others, including those

not yet alive. The intergenerational commitment of environmental community action

echoes Arendt’s (1958) discussion of work in the public realm: “If the world is to contain

a public space, it cannot be erected and planned for one generation only; it must tran-

scend the lifespan of mortal men” (p. 50).

Environmental projects with community-based organizations offer opportunities

for moral engagement. Through such projects youth come to appreciate that they are

members of a community with a stake in solving issues shared by that community. As

community members wrangle with issues, diverse perspectives are likely to be aired.

Besides such heterogeneous encounters within a community, environmental decisions

have implications beyond the geographical and political borders of communities as

well as beyond the borders of generations and time. Consequently, when communities

wrestle with environmental issues, there are moral questions concerning the implica-

tions of their actions and decisions for other people and species whom they do not know.

Environmental questions, thus, have the potential to enlarge the moral community for

which we feel responsible. Environmental projects create opportunities for homogen-

eous and heterogeneous encounters, a bonding and bridging with others that are essen-

tial components of moral development.

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, we have presented an overview of the concept of the commons and its

continued relevance, shared empirical studies on the potential of CBOs to contribute to

moral development and the variance between settings, and highlighted environmental

community action projects as a type of engagement that is particularly rich for both

moral development and understanding one’s identity as a member of the interdepend-

ent, global commons. We conclude by recognizing that concepts such as “the commons”

and “the common good” are useful in framing one’s role in the world, but they are often

too abstract as a starting point. Young people can come to understand the commons by

participating in the concrete practices in CBOs in local contexts. The habits that develop

via the routine practices of CBOs become integral to the youths’ evolving identities. Ulti-

mately, those identities (the who I am and what I stand for) are the bases from which

their moral actions ﬂow (Youniss & Yates, 1999). Beyond the dispositions and skills that

youth develop in the present, the repeated enactments of routine practices in CBOs

help to create a cache of memories, upon which people can draw throughout their lives,

of people working together to address complex social and moral issues (Daloz et al.,

1996; Nasir & Kirshner, 2003; Parks, 2000). This cache of memories, coupled with actual

practice in mini-polities and reassurance that their contribution matters, equips young

people to navigate moral ambiguity and complexity on an individual level, but more

importantly, those practices equip them to collectively build moral environments.

454 s C. Flanagan et al.

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456

THE MORAL AND CIVIC EFFECTS OF LEARNING TO SERVE

Daniel Hart, M. Kyle Matsuba, and Robert Atkins

By 1999, 64% of all public schools had students participating in service activities, and

then between 1984 and 1999 the number of high schools offering community service

opportunities rose from 27% to over 80% (National Center for Education Statistics,

n.d.). More recently, in a 2007–2008 survey of 1,190 colleges, it was found that nearly

one-third of students participated in service (Campus Compact, 2009). And although

slight declines have occurred over the past two years, close to 64.5 million people reported

volunteering in 2012 (US Department of Labor, 2013), contributing 7.9 billion hours of

service, which is estimated to be valued at $171 billion (Corporation for National and

Community Service, 2013). Given the prevalence of volunteering and the economic and

social value of volunteering to our nation, leaders continue to call the American people

to service (United We Serve, 2013).

Service work may not only advantage the community, but also foster development

among its participants. Recent reviews have claimed a multitude of beneﬁts for stu-

dents ranging from increases in academic performance to heightened self-esteem (Celio,

Durlak, & Dymnicki, 2011; Conway, Amel, & Gerwien, 2009; Furco & Root, 2010; van

Goethem, forthcoming). Given the prosocial, civic nature of community service, it is not

surprising that the consensus among these reports is that community service also sup-

ports moral and character development. The multitude of beneﬁts has led to the devel-

opment of service-learning programs in schools and universities. This chapter explores

the extent to which service-learning is associated with good outcomes, and the paths

through which service might lead to these outcomes. We begin by selectively reviewing

the service-learning literature highlighting the various theoretical paradigms and the

empirical research ﬁndings as they relate to moral and civic attitudes and behaviors. We

then explore the practical similarities between service-learning and community service

programs as revealed in research and discuss possible implications of these similar-

ities. Finally, we present recent research on volunteering that raises important issues for

service-learning and community service practitioners.

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 457

THEORETICAL ROOTS TO SERVICE-LEARNING PROGRAMS

The theoretical roots to service-learning programs are diverse. Many service-learning

researchers and practitioners cite the writings of John Dewey (1972). Dewey wrote

extensively on the link between education and society. He envisioned communities of

students working together to identify and respond to the social problems of their times

(Kahne & Westheimer, 2001), and wrote of the transformative nature associated with

these real-life educational experiences (Giles & Eyler, 1994). Through these continuous,

interactive, and reﬂective experiences with the world—community service and service-

learning—students gain new perspectives on and skills for solving social, moral, and

civic problems.

Others have emphasized slightly different facets to service-learning. For example,

Kenny, Simon, Kiley-Brabeck, and Lerner (2001), and Warter and Grossman (2001),

emphasized the transactional reciprocity between student and context where each com-

munity in which participants volunteer provides a unique cultural, environmental, polit-

ical, and historical context. Students learn about civic matters and social issues in each

of these milieus and each of these contexts contribute to students’ thinking on social

issues. Yates and Youniss (2001) bring a developmental perspective to service-learning

programs. Having youth interact with a broader network of people holding a diversity

of values can cause students to reﬂect on, elaborate, and revise their beliefs about social

justice, social institutions, and civic matters. This expansion of students’ current ideo-

logical beliefs and socio-moral framework provides a path through which they may

achieve identity as described by Erikson.

Still others view service-learning from a social learning perspective, having argued

that students acquire their civic attitudes and behaviors through the modeling and

expectations communicated by signiﬁcant adults (e.g., Scales, Blyth, Berkas, & Kiels-

meier, 2000; Switzer, Simmons, Dew, Regalski, & Wang, 1995). In the context of service-

learning, witnessing adults engaged in serving others and discussing the signiﬁcance of

such actions facilitate the acquisition and internalization of similar socially responsible

attitudes and behavior by students. Finally, some researchers have focused their work

around Eisenberg’s model of prosocial reasoning and behavior. According to Batchelder

and Root (1994), service-learning experiences trigger empathic responses in students

toward the people they serve, thus bringing conscientious attention to another’s need

and motivating them to respond. Having students discuss their service-learning experi-

ence may facilitate students’ prosocial-reasoning development, which should, in turn,

increase their motivation to respond to those in need (Blasi, 1995).

The diverse theoretical perspectives suggest that community service and service-

learning may affect many psychological domains of children’s and adolescents’ lives—

self-esteem, identity, academic achievement, moral and civic development have been

identiﬁed by advocates as beneﬁting from the inﬂuence of community service—and

may do so through cognitive, social, emotional, and cultural processes. The many claims

regarding beneﬁts together suggest that service-learning and community service may be

the solution to the ﬂaws and problems of children and adolescents.

Yet the diversity of outcomes and proposed mechanisms of inﬂuence suggests that

the service-learning as a discipline lacks the kinds of compelling research ﬁndings that

constrain theorizing in other academic ﬁelds. If a ﬁeld lacks clear ﬁndings about mecha-

nisms and routes of inﬂuence, then the relation of theory to ﬁndings cannot be judged,

458 s D. Hart et al.

and all theories are equal. To a degree, this remains the current state of affairs in the study

of community service to moral and character development. Theoretical perspectives on

community service and service-learning are also curiously independent of many of the

kinds of activities in which children and adolescents are actually engaged.

WHAT IS SERVICE-LEARNING?

While there is no speciﬁc consensus in how service-learning is deﬁned in the literature,

Furco (1996) sees service-learning as a combination of community service activities

with learning through academic, elective, or vocational courses. Service-learning pro-

grams typically possess some or all of the following features (Pritchard, 2001): (1) clearly

identiﬁed learning objectives; (2) student participation in selecting service activity; (3) a

theoretical base; (4) integration of the service experience with an academic course; and

(5) student reﬂection.

In contrast, community service typically refers to programs that focus on the recipients

who beneﬁt from the service activity (Furco, 1996). While these programs may foster the

development of participants’ moral and altruistic disposition, often these programs do

not emphasize the formal integration of educational curriculums with service work, and

so may not include formal reﬂection activities. Interestingly, some researchers differenti-

ate between service-learning and community service programs based on the underlying

goal of the service program. For example, Alt (1997) and Kahne and Westheimer (2001)

distinguish between “change” and “charity” goals. Programs that have “change” as their

goal hope to transform participants by enhancing their academic motivation and learn-

ing as it relates to civic issues associated with the service-learning experience. Programs

that have “charity” as their focus hope to foster participants’ altruistic and moral nature.

This latter goal is more prevalent in community service programs (Pritchard, 2002).

Given the diversity of uses of the constructs service-learning and community service,

it is unsurprising that an array of programs has been claimed as members of each. Con-

sequently service-learning programs vary enormously from each other, differing sub-

stantially in program content (e.g., a focus on poverty or the environment), the intensity

and duration of the program, the size of the student groups participating, and the degree

of choice students have in selecting projects (Furco, 2003). Moreover, students enter these

programs with different interests and abilities (Root, 2005). Finally, because service-

learning programs take place in natural settings typically unobserved by researchers, it

is difﬁcult to know exactly what experiences students receive during service-learning

(Waterman, 2003).

WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF SERVICE-LEARNING?

Articles reviewing the research on service-learning courses suggest positive, but not

easily interpreted, results (Celio et al., 2011; Conway et al., 2009; Furco & Root, 2010; van

Goethem, forthcoming). We review a few of these studies to highlight the beneﬁts of, and

theoretical issues associated with, service-learning.

Reduction of Negative Behaviors

In a large, well-designed study, Melchior (1999) investigated service-learning programs

embedded in seven middle schools across the US. These programs involved intensive,

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 459

hands-on service involvement plus opportunities to reﬂect on the experience through

discussions, journal writing, research papers, and presentations. Melchior found that by

the end of the program service-learning participants were less likely to be pregnant or

have made someone pregnant, and less likely to have been arrested in the previous six

months than students not enrolled in the service-learning program. Moreover, the effect

was maintained for a year following the termination of the program. Finally, students

who continued to be involved in organized service a year later consumed less alcohol

compared to students who did not continue their involvement. These results suggest

diverse and impressive positive beneﬁts for community service.

Other studies have also reported positive behavioral effects on students as a result of

participating in service-learning programs. For example, Switzer et al. (1995) compared

junior high students who either tutored younger students or provided help at senior

citizens facilities to students in a control group. They found that the boys in the “helper”

program were more involved in school and community activities, had fewer problem

behaviors in school, and were more likely to report that they felt like a better person.

Allen, Philliber, Herrling, and Kuperminc (1997) had participants perform voluntary

service, discuss their service experiences, and participate in classroom-based social skill

development. At the completion of the academic year, participants in the program were

less likely than adolescents in the control group to have failed a class, have been sus-

pended, or to have become pregnant compared to those in the control group. While

Allen et al. were not able to determine whether a speciﬁc element of the program—

service, reﬂection, or social skill building—was responsible for the beneﬁts of the Teen

Outreach, they did report that number of hours spent in community service was a better

predictor of beneﬁts than was the number of classroom sessions attended. However, the

theoretical mechanisms through which these programs effect such positive results are

vague and mostly untested.

Impacts on Moral Development

In studies exploring the impact of service-learning on moral development the results

have been generally positive (see Root, 2005). For example, Conrad and Hedin (1982)

chose 30 “experiential education programs” that emphasized students learning by doing

with associated reﬂection. The authors found that relative to students in the compari-

son group, students in the experiential programs showed signiﬁcant gains in moral

reasoning. These ﬁndings have been replicated in other studies (Boss, 1994; Lies, Bock,

Brandenberger, & Trozzolo, 2012).

Leming (2001) compared three groups of high school students: Those enrolled in a

community service elective course that featured a socio-moral “reﬂection” component,

those enrolled in a community service elective course with a limited, more general reﬂec-

tion component, and students from the same high schools enrolled in English classes.

At the end of the semester-long class, students enrolled in the socio-moral reﬂection

community service class had made substantial gains relative to the other two groups (the

community service with limited reﬂection, the comparison group of students enrolled

in the English classes) on measures of identity and social responsibility. Leming’s work

suggests that the form of reﬂection may be an important consideration.

Billig (2000) also cited studies showing that service-learning programs inﬂuenced

prosocial personality characteristics such as trustworthiness, empathy, and depend-

ability. For instance, Scales et al. (2000) found that middle school students involved in

460 s D. Hart et al.

service-learning programs have greater concern for the welfare of others compared to

students in a control group. In addition, students who performed more than 30 hours

of service during the year had a greater perceived efﬁcacy in helping others compared

to those students who performed less service. Finally, students involved in service-

learning, and who reported that their participation made them more interested in

their other classes, scored higher than comparison students in their concern for

others’ welfare, and their perceived efﬁcacy in helping others. For Scales et al. (2000),

the duration of service-learning experience and the reﬂection on this experience are

important in maintaining students’ concern for others and the belief they can effect

change in helping others.

Service-learning’s Effects on Civic Engagement

Many studies report a positive link between service-learning and civic engagement (Furco

& Root, 2010). Yates and Youniss (1996), for instance, examined the essays of service-

learning participants (described above) for “transcendent” ideological reﬂections, and

found that service-learning experiences can stimulate change in students’ ideological

perspective. The authors noted a movement away from a concrete description of and

judgmental attitude towards homeless people and a movement towards connecting their

experience with abstract constructs such as social inequality and societal responsibility.

Root (2005) reported that service-learning programs increase students’ interest in pol-

itics, attitude toward community involvement, willingness to take political action, and

political activity level. Similarly, Billig’s (2000) review revealed that students in service-

learning programs had an increased understanding of government function and were

more likely to vote up to 15 years later. Billig also reported that students in service-learning

programs were more likely to be aware of community needs, believed they could make a dif-

ference, and were committed to service now and later in life. Finally, Melchior (1999) found

that students involved in service-learning programs showed an immediate increase in civic

attitudes (e.g., “A good citizen to me is someone who puts back into the community”).

However, this effect was not evident a year later. The absence of long-term longitudinal

assessments leaves open important questions, including whether programs really have the

transformational impacts claimed by theorists and whether ﬁnancial and curricular invest-

ments in the programs are warranted by outcomes.

Meta-Analyses of Service-Learning Studies

In addition to the positive effects of service-learning on moral and civic attitudes dis-

cussed in the previous two sections, reviews generally ﬁnd that service-learning has

diffuse positive effects on various outcome measures. Celio et al. (2011) considered

62 service-learning studies involving 11,837 students to determine their outcomes in

ﬁve areas including attitudes towards self, school and learning, civic engagement, social

skills, and academic performance. To be included in the analysis, the service-learning

program had to meet four objectives. Programs need to: (1) be linked to academic cur-

riculum; (2) actively involve youth in its design; (3) involve community partners; and (4)

provide opportunities for reﬂection. Programs involved students in elementary, second-

ary, or postsecondary level and included a control group. Celio et al. reported that the

average effect sizes were small to medium (ranging from 0.27 to 0.43) for each of the ﬁve

outcome areas suggesting that service-learning programs were successful in producing

positive outcomes.

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 461

In another meta-analysis, Conway et al. (2009) considered 103 samples from 78

different studies. Each study included a pretest–post-test design with a community

service component sandwiched in between. They reported that students showed

improvement on academic and learning outcomes, personal outcomes (e.g., volun-

teer motivation, moral development), social outcomes (e.g., leadership and interper-

sonal skills), and citizenship outcomes (e.g., obeying laws, community involvement).

Effect sizes ranged from small (e.g., d = 17 for citizenship outcomes) to moderate (e.g.,

d = 0.43 for academic outcomes). Further, Conway et al. reported that service-learning

programs with a reﬂection component had a greater effect than those without on

personal, social, and citizenship outcomes. However, intensity and duration of service

made no difference on outcome measures.

Summary

The research evidence generally suggests that service-learning has beneﬁcial effects

on adolescents and their development. Reductions in problem behaviors have been

reported, as have increases in school engagement, academic achievement, self-esteem,

attitudes towards school, social skills, and so on. However, the fact that service-learning

seems to inﬂuence equally so many psychological facets of young people makes the

identiﬁcation of speciﬁc causal mechanisms difﬁcult; it appears that service-learn-

ing has beneﬁts for domains of psychological functioning ordinarily thought to be

relatively independent of each other. Nevertheless, researchers and educators have

attempted to infer from the studies reviewed above how service-learning character-

istics facilitate moral and civic development. Billig (2000), for example, lists the fol-

lowing program characteristics that she believes are necessary to maximize the effects

of service participation: (1) a high degree of student responsibility for the service;

(2) autonomy, student choice; (3) direct contact with the service recipient; and (4)

reﬂection. Others have added that students must be involved in leadership positions,

be directing the project themselves, and have a voice in the process (Melchior, 1999;

Morgan & Streb, 2001). National standards have been promulgated by the National

Youth Leadership Council that incorporates the criteria discussed above (National

Youth Leadership Council, 2009).

While each of these program characteristics can be linked to one or more theoret-

ical perspectives reviewed and to one or more empirical ﬁndings reported, the research

support for each is ambiguous. In Celio and colleagues’ (Celio et al., 2011) meta-

analysis, they found that interventions that featured more of these national standards

produced more development in students than did interventions with few or none of

these characteristics. While this ﬁnding is of value—clearly, programs ought to include

more of these standards and produce the best possible outcomes for students—they

do little to clarify theoretical outcomes. For example, while reﬂection has been shown

to be associated with positive outcomes in service-learning programs, these results

do little to clarify the role reﬂection plays in scaffolding psychological development.

In our view, based on the weight of the available evidence, we continue to be unclear

which of the elements of community service and service-learning, or sum total, are

critical to produce the beneﬁcial outcomes observed. Moreover, the processes through

which these effects occur have yet to be clearly identiﬁed.

462 s D. Hart et al.

THE EFFECTS AND CAUSES OF VOLUNTEERING CAN INFORM AN

UNDERSTANDING OF COMMUNITY SERVICE AND SERVICE-LEARNING

Researchers and practitioners often presume that service-learning is fundamentally dif-

ferent from volunteering. Actions are considered volunteering if they: (1) are voluntary;

(2) are deliberate; (3) occur over a period of time; (4) occur without expectation of

rewards or punishments; (5) are serving others in need of help; and (6) are on behalf

of people or causes (Snyder & Omoto, 2008). While there are many formal ways to dis-

tinguish between service-learning and volunteering, they are ordinarily treated distinct

based on the degree to which entry into and duration of the activity is voluntary and

by the extent of reﬂection that occurs. Yet while these conceptual distinctions theoretic-

ally make volunteering and service-learning substantially different activities, the limited

research on the matter fails to substantiate the importance of these distinctions in terms

of the activity’s effect on children and adolescents.

Service-Learning and Volunteering have Similar Effects

Volunteering and service-learning show similar effects on participating children and

adolescents. For instance, compared to non-volunteers, volunteers scored higher on

measures of positive emotions, social skills, sympathy, self-esteem, and emotion regula-

tion (e.g., Davis, Mitchell, Hall, Lothert, Snapp, & Meyer, 1999; Omoto & Snyder, 1995;

Penner, Fritzsche, Craiger, & Freifeld, 1995; Unger & Thumuluri, 1997; Yogev & Ronen,

1982). In addition, research has found volunteering to be a protective factor for youth

including fewer behavioral problems (Eccles & Barber, 1999; Uggen & Janikula, 1999).

These results parallel those in the service-learning literature reviewed, thus making it

difﬁcult to draw distinctions between service-learning and community service programs

based on outcome differences.

Comparisons of Service-Learning and Community Service Yield Few Differences

Research directly comparing service-learning and community service experiences also

show few outcome differences. For example, Furco (2001) studied over 500 students at

two high school sites. These students were enrolled in one of four classes/conditions:

community service, service-learning, service-based internship program (in which stu-

dents spent time learning about a particular career), and no service. The effects of the

program were assessed in academic, career, ethical, social, personal, and civic domains.

On most of these measures the two service-oriented groups scored signiﬁcantly higher

than the no service group. However, no outcome differences were found between service-

learning and community service participants. If measurable differences between com-

munity service participants and those enrolled in service-learning programs are lacking,

then perhaps the characteristics that distinguish them from each other have little effect

on developmental outcome.

Recent evidence suggests that whether service activity is voluntary or mandated

matters little for developmental outcome. Hart, Donnelly, Youniss, and Atkins (2007)

used data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88) to compare the

long-term civic outcomes of required and voluntary community service in high school.

Grade 12 students who reported involvement in high school community service—

whether required or voluntary—also reported higher levels of voting and community

involvement in early adulthood. Metz and Youniss (2003, 2005) made use of a naturally

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 463

occurring transition whereby a required service-learning program replaced a voluntary

one within a high school to study the effects of such a change on students’ later volun-

teering and civic engagement. Cohorts of students were followed longitudinally for two

years before and after the imposition of the mandatory service requirement. Metz and

Youniss found that rather than having a diminishing effect, requiring community service

of students in this school increased interest in volunteering and civic participation.

The research by Hart et al. (2007) and Metz and Youniss (2003, 2005) suggest that

researchers and theorists have over-emphasized the importance of voluntary entrance

into community service for the effects of the activity on outcome. Critics of service-

learning—who dismiss the value of service-learning—probably over-estimate the per-

ceived coerciveness of service-learning to participants. There is so much about the role of

student that is prescribed by law, regulation, and tradition that a service-learning require-

ment probably adds little discernible burden. Unless autonomy is seriously undermined

by the requirement, the community service activity is likely to beneﬁt its participants.

Researchers and theorists are also likely to over-emphasize the voluntary nature of

volunteering. While it is true that some people are more likely to volunteer than others as

a result of personality predispositions (Atkins, Hart & Donnelly, 2005; Matsuba, Hart, &

Atkins, 2007), the fact is that most people become involved in volunteering because they

are asked to do so by someone else (Matsuba et al., 2007) and that the activity usually

occurs in the context of a social institution. No doubt participating in community service

in order to fulﬁll a school requirement is somehow different than participating in the

same activity because a friend or admired adult (e.g., minister, troop leader, teacher)

asked one to do so. Nonetheless, it is important to recognize that in both cases there are

external incentives to participation.

A second quality distinguishing service-learning from community service/volunteer-

ing is the former’s emphasis on structured reﬂection on the activity. The idea is that only

through discussion or written consideration of the service activity can adolescents derive

the full beneﬁt of participation. In our own research (e.g., Hart et al., 2004), we have used

data from the US National Household Survey of 1999 (Nolin et al., 2000) (see Hart et al.,

2004; McIntosh, Hart, & Youniss, 2007). When we regressed political efﬁcacy scores on

a set of variables corresponding to each participant’s demographic statuses (age, gender,

race), control variables (academic achievement, extracurricular participation), verbal

discussion of service activities, and written reﬂection on service activities, we found that

talking about the service activity in class was related to lower levels of political efﬁcacy,

while writing about service was a positive predictor. We have no compelling explanation

for the positive associations between written reﬂection and political efﬁcacy; however,

research consistently conﬁrms the psychological beneﬁts associated with writing inter-

ventions (see Pennebaker, Mehl, & Niederhoffer, 2003). Our results, along with others

(e.g., Kahne & Sporte, 2008), suggest that curricular activities have uncertain relations

with the outcomes of service-learning.

On the other hand, recent meta-analysis of service-learning and community service

programs conducted by Conway et al. (2009) and van Goethem (forthcoming) reach an

entirely different conclusion. For example, Van Goethem identiﬁed 49 studies published

since 1980 of service-learning/community service programs for adolescents, and used

these studies to try and assess the importance of reﬂection and curricular components

for the outcomes. The author used a coding system to characterize the types of reﬂec-

tion that were used in the service-learning program and contacted authors of studies

464 s D. Hart et al.

in order to obtain information for this purpose when the reﬂection activities were

poorly described. Her meta-analytic ﬁndings suggest that service activities by themselves

mattered little; only adolescents involved in activities that featured reﬂection and co-

curricular activities showed much development. Moreover, their analyses suggested that

the amount of reﬂection was positively related to the beneﬁts of service-learning, but that

the nature of those reﬂection activities was not.

Summary

Distinctions made between service-learning and volunteering do not seem clearly linked

to differences in outcomes. Both service-learning and volunteer studies are associated

with positive developmental outcomes in the moral and civic domains. Some of the com-

ponents assumed to be critical to service-learning programs, such as student autonomy

and opportunities for reﬂection, do not seem essential for beneﬁcial impacts. Unfor-

tunately, even this conclusion is only tentative; there are some authors who claim that

only reﬂection produces beneﬁts from service-learning, a ﬁnding seemingly at odds from

research on the beneﬁts of volunteering.

Clearly, there is a real need for better research to determine the degree to which service-

learning has effects distinct from those arising from volunteering and community service

(see also Furco & Root, 2010). One direction that this research should take is to clarify

the nature of “reﬂection.” Reﬂection suggests a consideration of the experiences gained

in the service activities. But in many studies (e.g. Leming, 2001) reﬂection is only one

part of a set of co-curricular activities intended to foster social and personal growth. The

consequence is that it can be difﬁcult to discern whether the “reﬂection” activities are

genuinely enhancing beneﬁts of service or are better understood to have their own direct

effects on development in different domains.

WHAT DOES THE RESEARCH ON VOLUNTEERING SUGGEST ABOUT

LONG-TERM OUTCOMES AND DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESSES?

Long-Term Outcomes

Few studies have considered long-term consequences of service-learning as they related

to moral and civic development. In contrast, studies of volunteering have considered its

long-term impact. For example, using the National Educational Longitudinal Study data

set, Hart et al. (2007) found that both voluntary and school-required community service

were associated with volunteering in adulthood even after controlling for other relevant

predictors and demographic variables. Other studies report similar ﬁndings (Astin, Sax,

& Avalos, 1998; Wilson & Musick, 1997).

The Nature of Community Service Matters

Service-learning theory and research has tended to ignore the importance of the nature

of community service that is performed by program participants. It is as if theorists and

practitioners assume that what children and adolescents do matters less than reﬂection

on, and integration into the curriculum of the activity. Youniss and his colleagues (e.g.,

Metz, McLellan, & Youniss, 2003) have been particularly persuasive in arguing for the

centrality of activity for understanding the effects of community service on adolescents.

They compared adolescents who performed “social cause service” (activities that put

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 465

students in contact with people in need) to “standard service” (activities that did not

involve contact with people in need) and to no service. Metz et al. (2003) found that stu-

dents in the social cause service group had the greatest intentions of engaging in future,

unconventional activities such as boycotting a product, demonstrating for a cause, and

working for a political campaign.

To extend these ﬁndings, we (Hart, Matsuba, & Atkins, 2008) analyzed data from the

National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88; for a description of this

study, see Hart et al., 2007) to investigate the links between type of volunteering and

civic attitude (i.e., “importance to help others in community”), locus of control, and

self-worth among Grade 12 students. We regressed civic attitude on a set of demographic

variables and on a set of dummy variables corresponding to eight volunteer service con-

texts. Controlling for demographic variables, service in service groups, political organi-

zations, community groups, hospitals, and environmental contexts were associated with

higher levels of valuing helping others in the community. We repeated the same type of

analysis for locus of control, controlling for demographic variables and as well for Grade

10 locus of control. Adolescents reporting community service in the context of environ-

mental groups had changed towards more internal locus of control between Grades 10

and 12 than those performing community services in other groups. Finally, we regressed

Grade 12 self-esteem on demographic variables and Grade 10 self-esteem, and found

that adolescents involved in community groups increased in self-esteem while those vol-

unteering in environmental organizations declined in self-esteem.

These results suggest that some types of community service activities may be more

beneﬁcial than others in fostering the commitment to volunteer and to participate in

civil society. Rarely discussed is the possibility that some types of community service

may actually depress future volunteering and retard the development of qualities that

service-learning aims to foster. Such a ﬁnding is suggested by our ﬁnding of an inverse

relation between environmental group participation and self-esteem.

A particularly compelling example of the potentially retarding effect of community

service on the development of civic qualities is described by Kahne and Westheimer (2006).

They compared two school-based service-learning programs. Participants in one program

worked in collaboration with the local government to improve the delivery of services. The

various governmental ofﬁces in which students worked were interested in educating stu-

dents about government, and had identiﬁed projects that ensured that students would both

learn and succeed. Students in the other program chose their own projects based on a set

of readings that emphasized social injustice and community problems. Projects included

lobbying the county government to build a new health clinic to better serve women’s health

needs, lobbying the state legislature to introduce new legislation concerning juvenile delin-

quency, and efforts to investigate child labor and biased standardized testing. Students were

pre and post tested on measures of political efﬁcacy, political leadership, and civic know-

ledge. Perhaps not surprisingly, students in the ﬁrst program—the one in which students

worked in collaboration with government ofﬁcials who were interested and prepared to offer

meaningful community service experiences to adolescents—showed increases in political

efﬁcacy, political leadership, and civic knowledge compared to a control group not enrolled

in the program. Of particular importance for our point in this section was the ﬁnding that

adolescents in the other program—the one in which community service projects challenged

the status quo and often failed in achieving change—had diminished political efﬁcacy in

comparison to those in the control group who did not participate in the program.

466 s D. Hart et al.

Kahne and Westheimer (2006) portray the second program not as a failure but as pro-

viding an opportunity for adolescents to learn about the challenges to effecting change

in social structures. In a sense, students in the second program were acquiring a deep

appreciation for the resistance to change that characterizes political systems. Whether

Kahne and Westheimer are correct in that interpretation, our point is that what particip-

ants do in community service may matter in determining the effects of participation on

developmental outcome.

Processes in Volunteering

There has been considerably more research on the processes that culminate in, and in

turn are inﬂuenced by volunteering than is true in the service-learning domain (see

Snyder & Omoto, 2008). Hart and colleagues (2007) have proposed a model of volun-

teering that synthesizes the literature on the roots of volunteering, and have tested the

model in a representative sample of American adults. They propose that volunteering

is the product of, and in turn inﬂuences, (1) moral judgment and civic attitudes, (2)

self and identity, and (3) relationships and institutions. The research evidence indicates

that those with sophisticated moral judgment and prosocial attitudes are most likely

to volunteer. The service-learning research—reviewed in an earlier section—suggests

that community service can, in turn, foster the development of moral development and

heighten civic attitudes.

Identity and self-related cognitions are also associated with volunteering. Piliavin and

colleagues (Lee, Piliavin & Call, 1999; Piliavin & Callero, 1991) studied the emergence of

the role-identity of blood donor among those who regularly volunteered to give blood.

They found that those volunteers for whom the identity was elaborated and salient were

more likely to persist over time in blood donation. Matsuba, Hart, and Atkins (2007)

reported that adults who think often about their contributions to the community and

who believe themselves efﬁcacious in helping others are more committed to volunteer-

ing than adults who do not hold these beliefs. Hart and Fegley (1995) found that adoles-

cents deeply engaged in volunteer community service viewed their activities as integral

components of themselves in the future and of their ideal selves, a constellation of self-

representations suggesting that the volunteer activities had been synthesized into their

identities. Finally, Kahne and Westheimer (2006) have documented how service-learning

programs can affect beliefs about the self ’s political efﬁcacy.

The third domain of psychological functioning related to volunteering is social capital

or social networks (Hart, 2005; Snyder & Omoto, 2008). People typically enter into vol-

unteering because they are asked to do so by family, friends, and the institutions to which

they belong. Consequently it is not surprising that people who volunteer are also more

likely to be attending church, meeting with friends, and so on (Matsuba et al., 2007).

Omoto and Snyder (2002) reported that volunteers become increasingly connected into

community over time as a result of their work. In our own work (Hart et al., 2008), we

found that those students reporting participation in required community service became

more involved in religious participation in Grade 12, even after controlling for Grade 10

participation, than were students not involved in community service. The same pattern

was observed for extracurricular participation. The results suggest that even required

community service is associated with the strengthening of bonds to social institutions in

the community. In our view, future research ought to pay more attention to the possib-

ility that one of the main beneﬁts of service-learning is its effects on social capital.

Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve s 467

CONCLUSION

Our goal in this chapter was to continue to raise important issues concerning service-

learning and its effects on moral and civic functioning. Like many others, we are advoc-

ates for the potential developmental beneﬁts of service-learning and community service.

Yet our review cautions against complacent acceptance of the notion that service-learn-

ing is well-understood and always growth-facilitating. Our review suggests that theory

concerning service-learning is only weakly tied to research ﬁndings. There are a number

of consequences that follow from the lack of synthesis of theory and data. The ﬁrst of

these is that all theories are plausible, and consequently neither practice nor research can

rely on a set of guiding principles. Moreover, the beneﬁts that are claimed by advocates

for service-learning seem little connected to theory or to the actual practice of service-

learning. Finally, the disconnects among theory, practice, and research have resulted in

very little evidence for any of the psychological processes that have been proposed to

connect service-learning to the multitude of outcomes that are supposedly associated

with the practice.

Although the state of theorizing concerning service-learning is very weak, there is

good reason to correct this deﬁciency. The available evidence suggests that service-learn-

ing and community service are associated with development. There is solid evidence that

service-learning inﬂuences moral development, civic attitudes, and civic participation

and the sense of self and identity. Research also suggests that service-learning may be

associated with decreases in risk behavior and increases in positive behavior (e.g., aca-

demic achievement).

Our review has been critical of claims by advocates that service-learning has

distinct effects on development. In particular, the integration of service-learning

with curriculum material, freedom of choice in the selection of service activities,

and the opportunity to reﬂect on the service activity either through discussion or

writing have been claimed by advocates to be essential elements of development-

fostering educational practice. However, we ﬁnd little compelling evidence for the

importance and necessity of any one of these features. First of all, research com-

paring service-learning programs with curriculum integration to community service

programs without curriculum integration yields a very mixed picture. While some

meta-analyses (van Goethem, forthcoming) ﬁnd strong support for the importance

of reﬂection, the same study ﬁnds little evidence that the nature of the reﬂection

matters. Consequently, even if reﬂection is beneﬁcial there are few results available to

date to indicate how such activities ought to be structured. Second, students required

to participate in community service seem to beneﬁt from it as much as do students

given freedom of choice.

Indeed, our review suggests that there is little evidence to indicate that service-learning

has different effects on adolescent development than does volunteering. Both are associ-

ated with changes in civic and moral reasoning and attitudes, and in the sense of self and

identity. The parallels between service-learning and volunteering suggested to us that the

former might increase social capital as has been observed with the latter. Our analyses of

data from the NELS:88 were supportive of the idea that service-learning increases social

capital, as those involved in required mandatory community service were characterized

by increases in religious and extracurricular participation when compared to those not

involved in any sort of community service.

468 s D. Hart et al.

Finally, our review suggests that more attention ought to be paid to the activities in

which participants are involved. All community service is not alike; we have reported

that community service in some institutional contexts seemed more advantageous than

others (Hart et al., 2008). Moreover, we reviewed research by Kahne and Westheimer

(2006) that suggested that community service in some contexts may actually be associated

with decrements in qualities usually believed to increase as a result of service-learning.

We know too little about how the nature of service activity inﬂuences adolescents, and

we suspect that practitioners are too little concerned with this issue as well.

There are too many gaps in theory and research for an accurate appraisal of the value

of service-learning to facilitate development. We cannot in good conscience at this time

recommend service-learning as the answer to all problems and challenges faced by ado-

lescents. However, there are real reasons to be optimistic. Most research ﬁnds that adoles-

cents beneﬁt from service-learning and we have a general idea about the areas that are

inﬂuenced by service-learning. There are tremendous opportunities for theorists, prac-

titioners, and researchers to contribute to adolescent development through the applica-

tion and evaluation of service-learning.

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471

EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Moral Issues in Ecology Education

Elisabeth Kals and Markus Müller

DEFINITIONS AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION FOR

SUSTAINABILITY

There is no doubt that the pollution and destruction of the natural environment is one of

the key sociopolitical problems of an increasingly industrialized world. Despite numerous

attempts to reduce the threats of ecological damages, most of the global ecological problems

and their long-term effects are not yet under control (for example, global warming, defor-

estation, extinction of species, destruction of the ozone layer, exhaustion and pollution of

natural resources; e.g., McKenzie-Mohr, 2002). For a long period of time, these problems

have been considered primarily as technological challenges that can be managed by new,

more energy-efﬁcient technologies. However, to a large extent, ecological problems are due

to maladapted human behavior. This is particularly evident with regard to the continuous

growth of the human population on earth. Consequently, within social sciences, the eco-

logical crisis has been called a “crisis of maladapted behavior” (Maloney & Ward, 1973) or

a “crisis of culture” (Devall, 1982). As social scientists, we need to study the complexities

of these maladapted behavior patterns and their moral implications not only in terms of

the costs to human health and welfare, but also of the ethical aspects of our relationship as

humans to the general welfare of the planet (see Kahn, 1999).

Efforts in “education for sustainability” attempt to partially address these environ-

mental and moral concerns. Education for sustainability includes teaching and other

intervention strategies to promote values, knowledge, skills, and motivation to help

achieve ecological, economic, and social welfare (Jones, Selby, & Sterling, 2010). This is

in line with the deﬁnition of “environmental education” as the “curriculum encouraging

understanding and appreciation of the environment through subjects such as local history,

ecology, pollution etc.” (Page, Thomas, & Marshall, 1980, p. 122).

The focus of this chapter is how environmental psychological research can inform

education for sustainability. First, we describe the historical paradigm shift from the

472 s E. Kals and M. Müller

one-dimensional term “environmental protection” to the multidimensionality of “sustain-

ability.” Then we offer an overview of approaches for promoting sustainable behavior,

reﬂecting the broad variety of target groups, aims, and frameworks of these intervention

programs. Many successful intervention programs show that children can be introduced to

sustainable behavior from an early age but these efforts must still be much more reinforced

and established than is currently the case. We focus on the moral dimension of sustainable

behavior by taking the socio-ecological dilemma into account, and we present a wide range

of empirical ﬁndings on the moral dimension of ecological thinking, feeling, and behav-

ior. We reﬂect the difﬁcult question to what extent these ﬁndings are taken into account

by intervention programs. Finally, we propose concrete suggestions for evidenced-based

approaches to promoting sustainable thinking, feeling, and behavior.

FROM ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION TO SUSTAINABILITY

“Sustainability” and its synonymous term “sustainable development” were originally used

in forestry and forest management. From the report of the Club of Rome (Meadows,

Meadows, & Behrens, 1972), through the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1990) and the world

summit for sustainable development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, it has gained the status of a

guiding principle in the discussion on ecological problems and necessary behavioral changes

and is one of the most popular terms within the public discourse on ecological problems.

Sustainability is discussed on all political levels and has now displaced the older principles

of “pollution control” and “environmental protection” (De Haan & Kuckartz, 1998). In its

original meaning, sustainability represented the normative demand to realize intergenera-

tional justice so that the next generations could enjoy adequate opportunities for economic

and social development (WCED, 1990). However, the global spread of the term has led to an

increasingly inconsistent use and a multitude of deﬁnitions (see Kaufmann-Hayoz, 2006).

Consensus exists that sustainable development goes beyond environmental protection

with its primary focus on pro-environmental aims and efforts. Instead, various socially

accepted aims need to be balanced. In the relevant literature, ecological, economic, and

social targets are discussed as three different dimensions of sustainability (see Jüdes,

1997; Kreibich, 1996):

s 4HE ECOLOGICALDIMENSIONALSOCALLED ecological sustainability, encompasses aims

with regard to the natural environment, such as the protection of natural resources,

the reduction of environmental pollution and contamination, climate protection,

the protection of the ecosystems, the care for nature and landscape areas, the

conservation of biodiversity, and so on. This part of sustainability is largely

congruent with the older term of environmental protection.

s 3USTAINABLEeconomic development includes such things as economic welfare, pro-

tection of job security, economic freedom, and freedom of choice.

s 4HETHIRDDIMENSIONCOMPRISESsustainable social development, including, among

other factors, the satisfaction of basic human needs so that future conﬂicts over

the distribution of resources can be avoided. This explicitly embraces the need of

intergenerational justice.

Although these ﬁelds deﬁne the most commonly cited dimensions of sustainability, the

list is not exhaustive (see Valentin & Spangenberg, 2000).

Education for Sustainability s 473

The various dimensions of sustainability (ecological, economic, social), although

closely interconnected, often compete with one another and cannot be easily reconciled.

There is a complex transdisciplinary discussion on the right balance between the dimen-

sions to achieve justice (see Kreibich, 1996): Should the ecological dimension be given

priority? Or should all three dimensions be weighted equally? To what extent can eco-

nomic welfare be achieved without putting ecological aims at risk? In the literature, only

a few examples are reported where a balance between the three dimensions was explicitly

sought. One of these examples includes an ecological village with about 30 households,

where sustainable lifestyles were established bringing together ecological, social, and eco-

nomic aims (Kirby, 2003).

Summing up, sustainability is a “fuzzy set” (Linneweber, 1998, p. 66) that leaves room

for interpretation. Sustainable development is always the product of weighing competing

aims and values against another. A justice perspective can offer a theoretical framework to

this discourse by constructing ecological conﬂicts as conﬂicts of justice (Montada, 2007;

Müller, 2012) that also concern the justice for future generations (Gethmann, 2008).

Therefore, the concept of sustainability does not imply that there are “easy” technolo-

gical solutions to the interlocking social, ecological, and economic problems. Rather, it

shows that the greatest challenge of modern societies is to develop cultures of discourse,

to ﬁnd ways to consider the many issues involved, to respect the interests of stakeholders

as well as the rights of nature. Individual competencies for conﬂict resolution, awareness

of moral dilemmas, and a democratic culture of mutual understanding lie at the heart of

an education for sustainability.

OVERVIEW OF APPROACHES FOR PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE

BEHAVIOR

Globally, many efforts are underway to promote pro-environmental or sustainable

behavior. Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) point at education as a key

instrument for promoting sustainable development (see Huckle & Sterling, 1996). Before

going into detail, we will give an overview of the different scopes and dimensions of pro-

grams for promoting sustainability.

In terms of focus, education programs can follow two different approaches (see

Kyburz-Graber, Hofer, & Wolfensberger, 2006): The ﬁrst approach encompasses interven-

tion programs that are aimed at the promotion of pro-environmental behaviors. These

programs usually combine learning about nature and the environment with outdoor

experiences. In contrast, the second approach explicitly refers to moral dilemmas and

conﬂicts that arise when complexity of the issue is taken into account. In these programs,

the human-environment relationship is a central theme, for example by studying the use

and misuse of natural resources.

They can also vary on targeted audience (e.g., governments and intergovernmental

bodies, non-governmental organizations, the mass media, and the private sector, see Leal

Filho & Littledyke, 2004). An example for a broader approach would be community-

based programs that aim at advancing concerns for sustainability in a municipality (e.g.,

educational programs in adult education centers).

Sustainable development in the context of businesses is also discussed as “greening of

business” (see Huckle & Sterling, 1996)—a concept with increasing application, which

is also due to stricter environmental laws and the fact that “sustainability” has become a

474 s E. Kals and M. Müller

key criterion for organizational evaluation. As such, it is applied as a criterion of “good

work” in organizations, as a valuation standard of corporate culture, or as one of the

dimensions of corporate citizenship (Habisch, Jonker, Wegner, & Schmidpeter, 2005).

Besides their context, other criteria for categorizing programs are deﬁned by the fol-

lowing questions (for an overview, see Ahlberg & Leal Filho, 1998):

s $OES THEPROGRAM FOCUSON INDIVIDUALSTRYINGTO MODIFYTHEIR ATTITUDESVALUES

emotions, or behaviors, or on the situational context, by changing the basic

dilemma structure through incentive systems, such as lowered prices for mass

transit systems or stricter laws to protect the environment?

s 7HATISTHETARGETGROUP)SITINDIVIDUALSWHOSHOULDRETHINKANDCHANGETHEIR

individual behavior (e.g., decisions in their households, their consumer behavior,

or political votes); multipliers, like people with high social standing, inﬂuence,

and acceptance (teachers, leaders in organizations, etc.), or even mega-actors, who

are especially inﬂuential by their decision-making, either in the political or the

economic system?

s 7HATSPECIlCAIMS STRATEGIESANDMEANSAREIMPLEMENTEDINTHEPROGRAMAND

on what theoretical base are they founded?

s /N WHAT LEVEL DOES THE PROGRAM TAKE PLACE EG ON THE LEVEL OF INDIVIDUALS OR

organizations)?

s )STHE MOTIVATIONTOCONDUCTTHEPROGRAMMAINLY INTERNALOREXTERNALANDHOW

and by whom is the program ﬁnanced and evaluated?

s )STHEPROGRAMBASEDON PRACTICALSOCIAL ORACADEMIC PROBLEMDElNITIONSAND

objectives (Scott, 2006)?

Many sustainability education programs are unpublished and, therefore, not part of the

body of scientiﬁc knowledge. One reason might be that there are no research interests

involved and that the programs do not meet any of the previously mentioned scientiﬁc

standards. Concerning programs that are guided by standards of program implementation

and evaluation, an important area is in post-secondary education, in particular university

education. Sustainability is included in Bachelors and Masters programs in a broad variety

of disciplines, such as education, environmental psychology and other environmental sci-

ences, geography, economics, business, law, engineering, media and cultural studies,

nursing and health sciences, art and design, languages, theology, etc. (for an overview, see

Jones et al., 2010). The implementation of issues of sustainability in programs is discussed

in almost all disciplines, and even in business-related degree programs (MacVaugh &

Norton, 2012). A variety of different political, methodological, and didactical approaches

is, for example, covered on the level of the UNESCO program “Higher Education for Sus-

tainable Development” (for an overview, see Adomßent, Godemann, Leicht, & Busch,

2006). Academic teaching of sustainability at higher educational levels often goes together

with processes of “greening the campus” (see Jones et al., 2010). In these processes, teams

of college students, educational and technical staff work together to identify areas where

the environmental balance of the campus can be improved, for example by developing

monitoring systems for energy and water consumption, by using solar energy, or by using

knowledge from psychology to change energy-using behavior at the university. Often, these

projects are audited and become part of larger programs that also involve local and

regional stakeholders, like transportation companies, utility companies, and many more.

Education for Sustainability s 475

In many countries, education for sustainability has become an institutional require-

ment on the level of primary and secondary schools (see Simonneaux & Simonneaux,

2012). Overviews for programs on this level have been published previously (see, for

example, Krizek, Newport, White, & Townsend, 2012; Leal Filho, 2011) along with

helpful materials for practitioners, scholars, and researchers in this ﬁeld (see, for example,

Satapathy, 2007). Ahlberg and Leal Filho (1998) have compiled examples from national

experts for curricular school achievements from all over the world, such as the curricular

endeavor to educate pupils aged 4–14 in sustainability in Scotland, teacher training in

Mexico, environmental education centers in a National Park in South Africa, a Flemish

green school project, environmental education on soil features in Slovenia as well as in

the region of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. Many more current examples of

school programs aiming at promoting sustainable thinking and behavior are reported by

Clarke (2012), such as Sweden’s “Forest Schools,” China’s “Green Schools” program, the

US “Green Ribbon Schools,” or the “School of Sustainability.” As Clarke explains, schools

of sustainability should not follow the traditional path of education, asking “what kind

of young adults do we want to see as a result of this process?” but rather ask “what kind

of sustainable community do we want our schools to build as they redeﬁne their service to

others?” (Clarke, 2012, p. 107). As an example, he reports a project where the concept of

urban farms is located in a school environment. Teachers, students, parents, and the local

community work together to explore the space around the school buildings, come up

with new ideas of how to use the space, create work groups to collaborate on many dif-

ferent projects (like the production of food, the redesign of a space as a small stage, etc.),

make plans on the management of the spaces, etc. It is evident that this process should

not be seen as yet another burden for school teachers who have to follow a strict learning

curriculum, but as a resource and a place where learning can take place.

An overview of the international perspective in environmental education is also pre-

sented by means of collected examples (see Leal Filho & Littledyke, 2004). The number of

speciﬁc examples for schools and other projects to promote sustainability by education

is enormous. However, it seems to be an ongoing, dynamic process with networking or

exchange between the various approaches being very difﬁcult. Most texts, consequently,

close with demands for further interventions on the level of curricula.

Although education for sustainable development needs to be established as a polit-

ical aim on a societal level, schools are, without any doubt, the primary institutions for

formal education. As schools contribute to the moral development of children (see Dav-

idson, Khmelkov, Baker, & Lickona, 2011) they have the responsibility to promote sus-

tainable behavior as well (for a further discussion of the role of primary and secondary

schools, see Lange, 2012).

In the literature, several key concepts are deﬁned that are the basis for acting and

deciding in a sustainable way. The key competences, systematic thinking, anticipatory

thinking, and critical thinking were empirically investigated (Rieckmann, 2012). If the

moral dimension of sustainability is to be included, Kohlberg’s moral stages (Kohlberg,

1984) need to be discussed besides cognitive abilities. The level of critical reﬂection rises

by age and experience, and establishing education for sustainability on higher curriculum

levels would allow more sophisticated intervention aims and the outlook that graduates,

for example, could function as multipliers after their studies. Nevertheless, despite the

deﬁnite statements of the original theories, in modern psychological and philosophi-

cal views knowledge seeking is integral at every phase of the process (see Kuhn, 2010)

476 s E. Kals and M. Müller

so that there is no necessary need for post-conventional moral reasoning to start with

corresponding interventions programs. In line with this modern view there are many

attempts which have successfully begun to establish sustainable development at an early

age (see, for example, McNichol, Davis, & O’Brien, 2011; Zoller, 2011). As a conclusion

of the theoretical and empirical ﬁndings, children can be introduced to principles of

sustainability from an early age, but these principles need to be regularly reinforced and

reﬁned (see Huckle & Sterling, 1996).

THE MORAL DIMENSION OF SUSTAINABLE THINKING AND BEHAVIOR

The moral dimension of sustainable behavior is approached by various disciplines,

such as moral sociology (with a focus on collective actors), moral philosophy (focus-

ing on normative questions), moral education (aiming to change behavior), and

moral psychology (mainly trying to explain behavior empirically, based upon indi-

viduals’ perspectives). This section follows this last approach. Within this approach,

Schnack (1998, p. 83) responds to the question “Why focus on conﬂicting interests in

environmental education?” with a simple answer: “Because environmental problems

are constructed of conﬂicting human interests in relation to nature.” More speciﬁcally,

environmental issues can create a dilemma or conﬂict in which people must choose

between short-term individual and long-term societal interests as well as interests

in relation to nature. Typical for these kinds of dilemmas is that environmentally

unfriendly behavior yields individual beneﬁts in the short run: Far-distance travels

for holidays, for example, are attractive and beneﬁcial for an individual. However,

the same behavior can contribute to environmental pollution in the long run, which

causes harms to the society and the individual. On the other hand, environmentally

friendly behavior is often considered as less attractive—for example, many people

prefer using their car to using public transportation—but has, as is evident, positive

long-term effects on society, the individual, and the environment. The very structure

of these dilemmas can be found in many areas of environmental conﬂicts, be it on

a local (for example, the question whether to build a beltway in a nature protection

area) or a more complex global level (for example, behavior connected with the emis-

sion of greenhouse gases).

Behavioral changes are doubtlessly necessary to overcome the ecological crisis and

thus sustainable action serves the community as a whole. The necessary decision-making

includes behavior at a private as well as at political and economic levels in such a way that

mega-actors in politics and industry take the ecological consequences of their decisions

into account just as well as the economic and social consequences. A shift in cost–beneﬁt

outcomes of the decisions, however, facilitates a self-serving bias (Linneweber, 1998).

This is described by the paradigm of the socio-ecological dilemma (also called “social

trap” or “commons dilemma”; Hardin, 1968; Platt, 1973) and can be illustrated by indi-

vidual private decisions, but is also applicable to the decisional structure of mega-actors:

Environmental damages are side effects of productive, useful, or enjoyable activities

serving various interests and values of people. Pro-environmental politics and behaviors

imply restrictions on these interests and values. The various costs, however, like reduced

comfort, the effort required to change behavior patterns, or ﬁnancial shortages, are indi-

vidualized: They directly and exclusively affect the acting individual, whereas society as a

whole beneﬁts from sustainable behavior.

Education for Sustainability s 477

On the other hand, environment-endangering decisions may have direct and personal

beneﬁts for the individual. Ecological risks and burdens that derive from these deci-

sions are perceived to be external to the individual. Due to this externalization, envir-

onmentally risky decisions become a “rational choice” in cases in which an alternative

environmentally relevant behavior could be chosen as well (Montada & Kals, 2000).

This is not to say that every activity with negative ecological side effects is necessarily

irresponsible or selﬁsh. Rather, measures to protect the environment may interfere with

other highly valued social objectives, such as freedom of choice. This is also reﬂected in

the shift from the term “environmental protection” to the term of “sustainability” (see

Schmuck & Schultz, 2002).

Further conditions may promote decisions that put the environment at risk. For

instance, the causal chain from CO

emissions due to the use of fossil energy resources

to the greenhouse effect is indirect, uncertain, complex, and delayed to an indeterminate

point of time in the future (see Schmuck & Schultz, 2002). In this respect, the detri-

mental effects of one’s own environmentally risky behaviors can easily be doubted or

ignored. Moreover, the externalization of ecological costs is affected by time and geo-

graphical shifts (Opotow & Clayton, 1994; Pawlik, 1991): The effects of CO

emissions,

for instance, are not restricted to the local area, but might affect people far away from the

polluter in terms of place and time, such as people living in other countries or belonging

to future generations. In this respect, it is a rational choice for many polluters to continue

their polluting activities as long as they do not have to expect sanctions for their abusive

behavior (Montada & Kals, 2000; Müller & Hiendl, 2012).

This explains why solely appealing to actors’ long-term interests is not an effective

intervention strategy for promoting sustainable behavior. Instead, pro-environmental

behavior can be understood as moral behavior. The moral dimension of pro-environ-

mental behavior was empirically conﬁrmed on the level of cognitions as well as emotions:

Concerning the cognitive level, it has been shown that experiencing moral obligations,

accepting ecological responsibility, and perceiving ecological (in)justices form a strong

motivational base for sustainable behavior (for an overview, see Stern, 2000) and help

to overcome the socio-ecological dilemma. In general, the more the model variables are

speciﬁcally tied to the ecological dimension, the more they become predictive for sus-

tainable behavior. Dispositional constructs are less powerful. For instance, generalized

social responsibility, often measured by the eight-item scale of Berkowitz and Lutterman

(1968), evidences only low correlations with sustainable attitudes, and does not predict

sustainable behavior (e.g., Arbuthnot, 1977; Tucker, 1978). A dispositional approach to

explaining sustainable behavior therefore has been largely abandoned.

Similar result patterns can be found for egoism and altruism as personality traits.

Often no signiﬁcant correlations between egoistic or altruistic personality and various

attitudes towards sustainability and sustainable behaviors can be found. This was, for

example, examined by Russell (2001) in the context of climate protective behavior, like

energy consumption in one’s household.

However, many of the studies are quite old, reﬂecting the overall shift from generalized

to environment-speciﬁc moral attitudes and thus avoiding possible lower correlations

and effect sizes caused by different levels of speciﬁcity of predictors and behaviors.

Nevertheless, a few general attitudes have proven to be powerful predictors of sustain-

able behavior. These are, for example, the belief in a just world, empathy, and control

beliefs, which are part of the model of prosocial personality (Bierhoff, 2008) and which

478 s E. Kals and M. Müller

were able to predict pro-social, including sustainable, behavior well. Following this tradi-

tion, the model of Stern (2000) distinguishes between egoistic, altruistic, and biospheric

environmental concern. However, especially the biospheric concern seems to be posi-

tively related with sustainable behavior (e.g., Schultz, 2001).

Moral development in the context of ecological values, norms, and behavior repres-

ents another growing ﬁeld of research. The development of an ecological ethics has been

investigated referring to the change from materialistic to post-materialistic value orien-

tations (Lantermann, Döring-Seipel, & Schima, 1992). Kohlberg’s model of moral devel-

opment (1984) has been applied to pro-environmental, respectively sustainable, behavior

from the very beginning of the emergence of environmental psychology (see Dispoto,

1977). In this approach, sustainable behavior is interpreted as a function of different

developmental levels of moral judgment (see Eckensberger, Breit, & Döring, 1999). This

is mainly assessed by Rest’s Deﬁning Issues Test (DIT) to measure moral judgment (Rest,

1986; Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999). The test embraces various moral dilem-

mas which do not include ecological or socio-ecological dilemmas. The DIT has been

used in environmental psychology studies (e.g., Karpiak & Baril, 2008) or a modiﬁed test

has been developed to speciﬁcally gauge moral reasoning related to environmental issues

(e.g., Axelrod, 1994; Ojala, in press).

At a glance, conﬁrmative result patterns can be found for this Neo-Kohlbergian

approach (see Axelrod, 1994; Karpiak & Baril, 2008; Ojala, in press). For example, Karpiak

and Baril’s (2008) study of college students showed that higher scores on moral judg-

ment correlate positively with ecocentrism (belief in the intrinsic importance of nature)

and negatively with environmental apathy. Even effects of moral judgment development

on environmental behavior have been demonstrated (Ojala, in press). This reﬂects that

more research needs to be done in this area.

In general, correlations between sustainable behavior and moral variables increase,

when moral predictors are applied to ecological norms. For both Schwartz’s Norm Acti-

vation Model (Schwartz & Howard, 1980) or Stern’s Value-Belief-Norm Model (Stern,

2000), the acceptance of ecological norms and values as well as the internal attribution

of environmental responsibility are the most decisive predictors of sustainable behavior

(see Kaiser, Fuhrer, Weber, Ofner, & Bühler-Ilieva, 2001; Montada & Kals, 2000). The

denial of environmental responsibility, or its exclusive attribution to powerful others,

leads to environment-endangering decisions, for example, the promotion of economic

interests regardless of their impact on nature, or an active engagement in motorsport

activities (Montada & Kals, 2000).

The power of responsibility appraisals is bolstered by environment-speciﬁc justice

appraisals. The more people perceive the socio-ecological conﬂict as a justice dilemma

in which proﬁts and sufferings are distributed unjustly, the more they are willing to con-

tribute to the settling of this dilemma and to the (re-) establishment of justice (see Müller,

2012; Müller & Kals, 2007; Syme, Kals, Nancarrow, & Montada, 2006). This is particularly

the case when ecological burdens affect future generations or people living in other geo-

graphical areas (e.g., in so-called underdeveloped countries), who have neither agreed to

take the ecological risks nor proﬁt in any way from taking these risks. A denial of these

justice problems facilitates environmentally risky behavior (Horwitz, 1994; Opotow &

Clayton, 1994; Syme et al., 2006).

In summary, across different action ﬁelds and heterogeneous samples, it has been

shown that moral reasoning is a powerful motivational basis for overcoming interest shifts

Education for Sustainability s 479

described in the socio-ecological dilemma. This is in line with normative approaches,

such as the “integrity of creation” or the “principle of responsibility” according to Hans

Jonas (2012).

The building of behavioral decisions is, however, not a purely cognitive process, but

is ﬂanked by responsibility- and justice-related emotions, such as blame or indigna-

tion about insufﬁcient sustainable behavior (for an overview, see Kals & Maes, 2002).

These moral emotions should not be misinterpreted as “by-products” of dominant

cognitions in such a way that they impair an apparently cognitive process of decision-

making, but they seem to be a chieﬂy independent source of motivation (Haidt &

Kezebir, 2010). This shows that in the ﬁeld of sustainable behavior emotions arouse

behavior in addition to rational cognitions by their affective, cognitive, and motiva-

tional component.

Affective connection to nature, also called emotional commitment to nature, emo-

tional afﬁnity toward nature, nature-relatedness, or inclusion of nature in self, is one

of the very powerful emotions (see Clayton, 2003; Dutcher, Finley, Luloff, & Johnson,

2007; Kals, 2012; Nisbet, Zelenski, & Murphy, 2009). This construct can be traced back

to Wilson and Kellert’s biophilia hypothesis (Kellert, 1997) and belongs to a completely

different emotional category, which can explain sustainable behavior well—regardless

of moral obligations (see Kals, Schumacher, & Montada, 1999). As the most strongly

experienced and intimate of feelings, it is incompatible with the rational-choice theory

referring to maximizing one’s own beneﬁt on a rational decision base (see Coleman &

Fararo, 1993), and its motivational functions can also not be explained by the concept

of the socio-ecological dilemma. Affective connection towards nature can be traced

back to present and past experiences in nature (Müller, Kals, & Pansa, 2009) and is

closely related to the development of an environmental identity (Clayton, 2003; Hinds

& Sparks, 2008). Data from questionnaire surveys have shown that the time spent in

nature in one’s childhood as well as positive experiences in nature are strong predic-

tors of the emotional connection to nature (Kahn & Kellert, 2002; Kals et al., 1999). In

this respect, young people living in highly industrialized areas are not as emotionally

connected to nature as people living in rural areas with a lot of nature surrounding

them (see Hinds & Sparks, 2008; Müller et al., 2009). There is an ongoing debate as

well as research on affective connection, increasingly conﬁrming the power of this

emotional bond with nature (Kals, 2012).

To what extent are the reported ﬁndings reﬂected in intervention programs? Aho

(1984) presented a theoretical framework of education for sustainability with special

focus on teaching pro-environmental action (concrete actions, decision-making, solu-

tions, and choices). The author distinguishes between three psychological domains that

need to be addressed in order to reach this aim: focusing (1) upon ethics and values

(environmental values, ethics, responsibility, and attitudes), (2) upon cognitions (know-

ledge, understanding, cognitive processes, and skills), and (3) upon affections (experi-

ences and emotions). These domains have signiﬁcant overlap and interact with each

other. Applying the previously reported ﬁndings to Aho’s three psychological approaches

for promoting sustainable education, the literature on motives for sustainable behavior

provides support for all of them: Any education or intervention strategy should equally

take into account individual ethics and values, environment-speciﬁc cognitions, as well

as emotions and nature experiences. These approaches are described in the following

section in further detail.

480 s E. Kals and M. Müller

SUGGESTIONS FOR EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACHES TO PROMOTE

SUSTAINABLE THINKING, FEELING, AND BEHAVIOR

In this chapter, we suggest that sustainable behavior be considered a category of moral

action that competes with other socially accepted behaviors, such as pursuit of economic

growth. Thus, the question “How can sustainable behavior be promoted?” should be

reformulated into “How can the socio-ecological dilemma and the interest conﬂicts that

result from the three-dimensional concept of sustainability be overcome?” Under what

personal and situational conditions is sustainable action prioritized?

The promotion of sustainable thinking, feeling, and behavior has primarily been

done under a moral perspective. Based upon Rest’s four-component model (Rest, 1986),

the perspectives of moral sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and moral character can be

distinguished which all offer an important approach to promote sustainable behavior.

Concerning these moral perspectives, cognitions and emotions with regard to ecological

responsibility and justice seem to be most important. Models that refer to the speciﬁcs of

these behaviors, such as Schwartz’s Norm-Activation Model (Schwartz & Howard, 1980)

or Stern’s Value-Belief-Norm Model (Stern, 2000), successfully predict and explain sus-

tainable decisions and behaviors. For intervention purposes, this result leads to the con-

clusion that responsibility- and norm-focused approaches should include a discourse on

ecological, economic, and social responsibilities, and that ecological ethics, also called

“green moral values” should be established (see Bassey, 1998). This could be done in

families and institutions for early education (like kindergartens and elementary schools),

high schools, post-secondary institutions, and the broader public.

Furthermore, the empirical ﬁndings on moral development suggest including dis-

cussions about environment-speciﬁc dilemma situations in intervention programs (see

Thompson & Stoutemyer, 1991). The socio-ecological dilemma can be presented in

many different forms. It may be experienced in ﬁshing conﬂict games, either in a real

or computerized learning environment (see, for example, Ernst & Spada, 1993). These

approaches should address in the same way cognitions as well as emotions, like indig-

nation about insufﬁcient environmental protection shown by others in ﬁshing conﬂict

games.

As the dilemma situations are very complex, moral thinking should be combined

with sustainable thinking (Spada, Opwis, Donnen, Schwiersch, & Ernst, 1990). Environ-

mental psychology has contributed extensively to the body of knowledge on psycho-

logical barriers to promoting sustainable behavior (see Swim et al., 2010). One major

barrier is the phenomenon of “limited cognition” (Gifford, 2011): Environmental prob-

lems are rather complex, and they involve many non-linear relations and a high degree

of uncertainty about causes and effects. Individuals, however, as described, tend to act

on a more short-term basis, neglecting the long-term effects of their behaviors. More-

over, perceived uncertainty can even serve as a justiﬁcation for inactivity, and risks that

are communicated as being uncertain tend to reduce willingness for action (Budescu,

Broomell, & Por, 2009). Thus, education for sustainability has to face the double task

of neither overwhelming individuals with too much uncertainty nor over-simplifying

complex relations.

A supplementary way to fostering the moral perspective on sustainable behavior and to

overcoming the gap between short-term self-interests and long-term interests of society

is offered by positive nature experiences. Being in nature promotes the development of

Education for Sustainability s 481

an affective connection to nature, feelings of empathy toward, and identiﬁcation with

it. Connection to nature varies between individuals. It is primarily instigated by direct

experiences in nature, such as viewing and experiencing wilderness, observing phe-

nomena of weather, or perceiving the change of the seasons (Lyons & Breakwell, 1994).

Most authors agree that this relatedness to nature becomes stronger the more concretely

nature is experienced, and that it is based on affective experiences rather than solely cog-

nitive appraisals (Nisbet et al., 2009), for example, when knowledge of nature is trans-

ferred by experiencing nature consciously with one’s ﬁve senses (Kaplan, 2001).

Connection to nature is especially promoted when nature experiences are shared

with signiﬁcant others (Kals et al., 1999). These joint experiences seem to facilitate the

integration of this experience into one’s own self-concept and identity (Clayton, 2003).

These signiﬁcant others (at ﬁrst, one’s parents) take on the role of transmitting nature

values and enjoyment. The “signiﬁcant others” change over one’s life span in such a way

that family members are more and more replaced by peers. Therefore, the fostering of

positive experiences within nature, preferably shared with signiﬁcant others, is, even in

environmental education programs for adults, a potent way to provoke interest and an

affective connection to nature and to overcome the interest conﬂicts between short-term

self-interests and long-term ecological interests of the society as a whole.

This last ﬁnding demonstrates that the implementation of the education programs

needs to be done with regard to the speciﬁc circumstances and the social context in

which they take place. Internal and external motivators inﬂuence one another in their

effects and efﬁcacy. If, therefore, not only the individual is in the focus of interest but

if the environment is also shaped in such a way that sustainable behavior is promoted,

effects are strengthened. This can be done on the situational level (e.g., by using prompts

reminding of sustainable behavior) or on the social level (e.g., by the modeling behavior

of respected others who, for example, demonstrate sustainable behavior or who enjoy

the natural environment). On a more global level, the change of general conditions of

relevant behavior, such as stricter laws, or prize and reward systems, should also be taken

into account.

Comparing the sections on the motive structure of sustainable behavior with a pos-

sible derivation of intervention programs on the one hand and the earlier overview on

current intervention programs on the other, the reader will recognize a gap: On the one

hand, a profound knowledge base on the motives and motivation for sustainable behav-

ior has been established leading to speciﬁc recommendations for intervention; on the

other hand, practical intervention programs consist of patchwork elements only. Reasons

for this discrepancy and suggestions how to overcome it are discussed in the following

section.

SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK

The term of “environmental education” (later partly changed into “education for sustain-

ability,” see above) was coined in the 1970s around the same time when environmental

psychology was established as a scientiﬁc discipline. The beginnings of environmental

education, however, can be traced back to the 1950s or 1960s (Eulefeld, 1990). A major

contribution to the promotion of environmental education can be seen in the UNESCO

conferences of the 1970s. They provided an impetus to make environmental education

programs part of the general education process and to integrate it into school curricula.

482 s E. Kals and M. Müller

Since then, many ﬁne grained decisions of ministries of education in Europe have been

made to achieve this aim (see Eulefeld, 1990). Parallel developments can be observed for

the US, with some time lag, though.

Promoted by these political developments, many innovative programs have been

developed all over the world, but mainly independently of the existing empirically con-

ﬁrmed knowledge base concerning motives and motivation for sustainable behavior. In

environmental education, a research deﬁcit has been recognized, concerning the content

and implementation of programs as well as their effectiveness (see Bolscho & Hauen-

schild, 2006). This deﬁcit needs to be overcome by focusing upon the speciﬁc competen-

cies of the related disciplines. Two of the core contributions of environmental psychology

can be seen in the provision of knowledge on the motivation base of sustainable behav-

ior and on the effectiveness of intervention strategies. Environmental educators, on the

other hand, are experts for the application of this knowledge in practical programs. Thus,

environmental psychologists and educators need to collaborate for their mutual beneﬁt,

and they need to invite other disciplines such as sociology, political sciences, economy,

nature sciences, engineering to achieve inter- or even transdisciplinarity (Schweizer-Ries

& Perkins, 2012).

The relation between practice and science in the ﬁeld of sustainability remains dif-

ﬁcult, though. Two ways to justify environmentally related interventions can be differ-

entiated: The ﬁrst, basically scientiﬁc approach advises the traditional four steps of (1)

formulating a problem deﬁnition (problem; P), (2) ﬁnding explanations for the problem

(analysis; A), (3) developing and testing the process model (test; T), and (4) construct-

ing an intervention program (help; H), which also includes the program’s evaluation

(PATH-model of Buunk & van Vugt, 2008). The second approach, which is related to

action research, is based on practical problems, where scientiﬁc knowledge is derived

from the intervention process itself (Schweizer-Ries & Perkins, 2012). Both strategies

have speciﬁc advantages and disadvantages. It may be politically opportune to directly

start action-oriented with interventions and education programs to promote sustainable

behavior, but these interventions should nevertheless be evaluated in order to gather

feedback about the effectiveness of such programs and to have an impact on further the-

orizing, research, and intervention planning in the ﬁeld of education for sustainability.

A clariﬁcation of the core concepts is much needed, in particular a working consensus

of what is meant by “sustainability” and “sustainable behavior” has to be achieved on the

level of examples and concrete behavioral decisions, also in order to avoid the described

inﬂationary use of the terms. The concept of interactional expertise for sustainability

education has been introduced to address this need (Berardy, Seager, & Selinger, 2011). A

special focus is on the communication of sustainable research (Scott, 2006) to overcome

the gap between research and practice, that is between primarily academic and socio-

political objectives. Additional core competencies on joined thinking and dealing with

uncertainty can be learned.

One way to concretize this interdisciplinary approach would be to promote approaches

aiming to link the current need for action with the existing knowledge base of environ-

mental psychology. A combination of both intervention paths may result: The practical

requirements should be answered directly by offering education programs; in parallel,

the underlying motives of sustainable behavior and the critical demand of networking

and the handling of uncertainty should be analyzed further. Thus, we do not follow the

argumentation that further research on the underlying motives of sustainable behavior

Education for Sustainability s 483

is necessary as a sine qua non to establish intervention programs. Of special help are the

interventional approaches that aim to link theory and practice by founding their prac-

tical work on theories and psychological mechanisms. They help explain what sustainable

thinking and behavior embrace on a meta-level (like valuing the different dimensions of

sustainability and promoting a discourse to the individual case with respect to justice and

necessary trade-offs) and they lead to the derivation of core competencies (like complex

thinking). This practical work should be demand-driven (see Geesteranaus, 1998), which

implies that the impulse for conducting the program should arise from practical needs

and underlines that the call from people working in the ﬁeld of environmental education

should be heard.

On a more general level, education for sustainability should be understood as a life-

long process: It should begin in kindergarten and pre-school, should be followed up in

primary and secondary schools as well as in universities, and ﬁnally be disseminated into

other areas of life. In schools this education for sustainability has not yet reached the

level it should have, as environmental protection and sustainability are not at the center

of the curriculum of any school subject. As a vision, even a school subject “sustainability”

could be introduced in curricula (see Ahlberg & Leal Filho, 1998). This would not only

strengthen the moral discourse and moral development but also cognitive development

of students by introducing them to complex thinking.

In his book Education for Sustainability: Becoming Naturally Smart, Paul Clarke (2012)

argues for a full transformation of schools and schooling that is required to reach the

aim of education for sustainability. He bases his argument on the assumption that such

education needs to be grounded in a comprehensive understanding of our relationship

with the natural world. Although examples for integrating the concept of sustainability

on the level of the nation’s or federal state’s curricula can be found nearly everywhere,

the majority of schools are still far away from being green schools, as a place where

sustainability is exempliﬁed (for example by teachers’ or parents’ thinking and behav-

ior) and successfully taught. Walter Leal Filho speaks of a vision of education and of

a long-term goal on the level of world trends (Leal Filho, 2011). On a theoretical level,

many papers discuss this global dimension and its speciﬁc challenges (see, for example,

Ahmad, Soskolne, & Ahmed, 2012).

On the applied level of educational practice, there are many solitary struggles and

attempts to tackle these challenges, but they are not sufﬁciently linked on national or even

international levels. Environmental psychology and educational sciences can provide the

knowledge required to deﬁne goals and establish appropriate means and strategies for

these programs. Yet, the ﬁnal responsibility for the realization of this global task remains

with educational policies.

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488

MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION THROUGH SPORTS

F. Clark Power and Kristin K. Sheehan

Most adults who played sports as children assert without hesitation or qualiﬁcation

that sports build character. Asked to identify the speciﬁc virtues that sports build, the

majority identify virtues related to achievement, such as hard work and perseverance.

Some mention social virtues, such as teamwork and unselﬁshness. Sports likely instill a

work ethic and teach life lessons about persistence and teamwork (Shulman and Bowen,

2002), but whether they help to develop morality is a question that is rarely investi-

gated or even asked. No one brings up justice spontaneously. In fact, when asked whether

participation in sports taught them fairness and other moral virtues, such as honesty,

most athletes and coaches scratch their heads. It is instructive to note that in a 2010 blog

while still at the height of his celebrity, Lance Armstrong listed three traits to describe

his character: strong, helpful, and optimistic. He never included justice or honesty. What

does this say about the virtues that we tend to emphasize in sports and the consequences

of losing sight of morality as a component of character?

DO SPORTS BUILD CHARACTER?

School and sport administrators typically justify the inclusion of sports as an

extracurricular activity by claiming that they promote character as well as physical

development. For example, when challenged to demonstrate whether interscholas-

tic athletics had any educational worth, a committee formed by the New York State

Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA), drew up “An Educational

Framework for Interscholastic Athletics,” which recognized the teaching of virtue

as the primary goal of sports participation (2001). The committee reafﬁrmed the

NYSPHAA’s mission statement that interscholastic athletics are to foster “the quest

for excellence” and promote high standards of “competence, character, civility, and

citizenship” (NYSPHAA, 2001). The NYSPHAA is not alone in justifying sports

programs as contributing to character development. The mission statement of the

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 489

National Federation of State High School Associations states that sports “develop

good citizenship and healthy lifestyles.”

In spite of the pervasive belief, at least among administrators, that sports build char-

acter, there has been a dearth of empirical evidence to support the claim. Recently,

several studies indicate youth sports may have a beneﬁcial inﬂuence on indicators of

Positive Youth Development (PYD) (e.g., Gano-Overway et al., 2009; Zarrett et al., 2009).

Yet these studies also show that the sports experience can have negative effects as well.

While there are studies showing that sports participation can prevent delinquency, there

are other studies indicating that sports participation can increase it (Mahoney, Eccles,

& Larsen 2004; Hartmann & Massoglia, 2007; Gardner, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009;

Zarrett et al., 2009). As Bredemeier and Shields (2006) rightly assert, there is no univocal

sports experience. Athletes’ experiences of playing sports vary widely depending on the

particular sport they are playing, the competitive level, the coaching style, the inﬂuence

of parents, and so on.

SPORTS ARE PLAY

Before we can begin to analyze the ways in which the sports experience can build charac-

ter, we must take into account the fact that sports are by nature play and, as such, have a

critical role in child development. Huizinga (1955, p. 13) provides what has become the

classical deﬁnition of play as a fundamental expression of human freedom:

[Play]is a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being

“not serious” but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an

activity connected with no material interest, and no proﬁt can be gained by it. It pro-

ceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to ﬁxed rules

and in an orderly manner.

Huizinga’s (1955) description of play as having the paradoxical quality of being “non-

serious” but, at the same time, utterly engrossing captures sports at their best. Sports

played well bring about pure joy and a release from the cares of everyday life. Play pro-

vides a wide range of cognitive, social, and emotional beneﬁts to people of all ages,

particularly to children (e.g., Elkind, 2007; Fisher, 1992; Pelligrini & Holmes, 2006).

Piaget believed that through playing games, children developed a sense of fairness and

understanding of rules. Initially, children ﬁnd the rules of games to be arbitrary impo-

sitions that constrain their free play. Yet through the experience of playing games with

their peers, children gain ownership of them as “the free product of mutual agreement

and an autonomous conscience” (1932/1965, p. 28). Piaget found that as children

become competent to make their own rules they base those rules on the “spirit of the

game,” making new rules to make their games more challenging and fair. In observing

how children play games, Piaget found a model for moral education. The teacher, he

proposed, should act as a “collaborator” and not a “master” (p. 404). Masters impose

rules and expect obedience, while collaborators make rules based on reason and

reciprocity.

Piaget’s research has had surprisingly little inﬂuence on recent discussions of sports as

a character-building activity. This may be because the games that Piaget studied, marbles

and hopscotch, are more like children’s informal pickup games than organized youth

490 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

sports. Children’s sports experience has changed dramatically over the last 40 years as

adult-organized sports have almost completely replaced informal, children-controlled

games (Chudacoff, 2007; Coakely, 2009; Scarlett, Naudeau, Salonius-Pasternak, & Ponte,

2005). This dramatic alteration of children’s lives is not conﬁned to sports alone. In fact,

as Chudacoff (2007) and Gray (2011) among others have pointed out, children’s play in

general has been on the decline to the detriment of their well-being.

Most of the enjoyment that children experience in playing games comes from the

fact they control their activity. Once young children have mastered the basic skills of a

sport, like soccer, and understand the rules, they easily become engrossed in devising

strategies on offense and defense. Yet in organized youth sports, coaches typically take

charge of the strategic element of the game while leaving only the execution of their

decisions to the children. In such cases, it would be more accurate to say it is the coaches

who are playing rather than the children. This leads to two unfortunate consequences.

First, the enjoyment of the game diminishes and second, the cognitive value of the game

is reduced. Research in social cognitive development (Selman, 1980), suggests that com-

petitive games encourage children to take the roles of others and to coordinate roles in

developing strategies involving multiple players. Evidence from the study of youth sports

suggests that the more children are involved in their games, the more likely they are to

develop the creativity and the mastery needed to excel (Côté & Fraser-Thomas, 2007).

As Piaget found, games do more than help children acquire activity-speciﬁc expertise,

games help children to develop a morality of cooperation in which they learn through

direct experience not only how to compete but the value of playing by rules. In the marble

games that Piaget studied, the children were responsible not only for their strategies but

also for assuring that the rules of the game were upheld and enforced. In organized youth

sports, adult ofﬁcials, referees, and umpires are given that responsibility. Yet instead of

respecting ofﬁcials for ensuring fairness in games, coaches, even at the elementary school

level, often angrily criticize ofﬁcials in front of their players (Shields, Bredemeier, LaVoi,

& Power, 2005).

Youth sports can never realize their character-building potential as long as adults

control them. If children are to develop moral virtues through sports participation,

character educators must address the fact that the adult-dominated structure of youth

sports is inherently ﬂawed. Ironically, adult control also undermines the development of

athletic excellence because adult control creates a high pressured, authority-constrained

environment that discourages the experimentation and innovation necessary in the

development of great athletes (Coakley, 2009). Such an environment also undermines

the single most important motivational factor in youth sports—love of the game itself.

In their study of the factors that contributed to US Olympians’ success, Gibbons et al.

(2003) found that the “love of the sport,” acquired in the early years when teaching

and learning is “playful,” is, as Bloom (1985) discovered in his pioneering educational

research, the foundation for later excellence (p. 32).

It should not be surprising then that self-determination researchers are ﬁnding that

when coaches support children’s autonomy by giving them choices and power over

making decisions, children enjoy sports more and experience greater intrinsic motivation

(Conroy & Coatsworth, 2007; Hagger & Chatzisarantis, 2007). Although moral educators

(Power & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008) and self-determination theorists (Ryan & Deci,

2007) argue that children and adolescents should be given greater power over decision-

making to foster moral development and intrinsic motivation, coaches are sometimes

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 491

reluctant to yield much power over decisions about play on the ﬁeld or discipline off

the ﬁeld. Coaches tend to coach as they are coached, and few models are available that

emphasize fostering athletes’ autonomy by helping coaches to foster discovery learning,

ask good questions, organize team meetings, and facilitate democratic decision-making

(Beedy, 1997; Giancola, 2010; Power & Sheehan, 2012).

Coakley (2009) notes the rise of organized youth sports, which began in the postwar

years of the 1950s and 1960s and was fueled by the following factors: 1) the need for

supervised outside of school activities caused by the rise in the number of families with

both parents working outside the home; 2) a redeﬁnition of what it means to be a “good

parent” that emphasizes involving children in structured activities with measurable

markers of success; 3) a rising concern that left on their own, children will get in trouble;

4) a belief that organized sports will protect children from the dangers of the world; and

5) the rise in wealth, status, and esteem attained by elite and professional athletes. These

factors combine to “professionalize” youth sports (e.g., Brower, 1979; Coakley, 2009).

Youth sport programs have become increasingly dominated by adults who have imposed

“big league” structures and expectations on children. Professionalized uniforms, fancy

scoreboards, elaborate rules for drafting players, growing numbers of spectators, and the

imperial presence of adult coaches have transformed children’s play into highly pres-

sured and carefully scrutinized work (see Farrey, 2008).

CHARACTER OR “CHARACTERS” DEVELOPED THROUGH SPORT

Shields et al. (2005) undertook a study of youth sport behaviors, which raised disturbing

questions about the character-building qualities of the youth sport experience today. In a

sample of children between the sixth and eighth grades, over one-quarter of the children

reported that during their past sports season their coaches encouraged them to retali-

ate, angrily argued with a referee, yelled at a player for making a mistake, and berated

an opponent. Not only did children witness coaches misbehaving, but also their parents.

The same study revealed that spectator behavior was no better than that of the coaches.

Approximately 40% of the children in the sample reported that fans teased them and

their teammates; and over two-thirds of the children reported seeing fans angrily yell at

an ofﬁcial. Given that this study focused only on one sport season, we can only imagine

what children witness from adults over their entire youth sport careers.

In spite of the negative behavior that they witness, most children report that they

have fun playing organized sports. Many children report that participating in sports

teaches them about teamwork and about getting along with others (Power & Seroczyn-

ski, 2013). Yet to date, there is no empirical evidence that participation in organized

sports develops moral judgment (e.g., Conroy, Silva, Newcomer, Walker, & Johnson,

2001; Shields, Bredemeier, & Power, 2002; Stoll & Beller, 2000; Weiss & Smith, 2002).

Cross-sectional research (Bredemeier and Shields, 1986a; Kavussanu and Ntoumanis,

2003; Proios, Doganis, Arvanitidou, Unierzyski, & Katsagolis, 2004; Stevenson, 1998)

indicates that increased athletic experience does not lead to higher moral reasoning. In

fact, some studies with college level athletes suggest that sports experience can have a

negative effect on moral thought (Bredemeier & Shields, 1986a; Priest, Krause, & Beach,

1999; Stoll & Beller, 2006). Similar results have been found in studies of high school

sports (Beller & Stoll, 1995; Rulmyr, 1996). A failure to ﬁnd that sports participation

promotes moral judgment at the high school or college levels does not necessarily mean

492 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

that sports participation cannot play a role in moral development at the youth level.

It may be that, in spite of the lofty claims of their mission statements, the highly com-

petitive nature of high school and college athletics compromises their effectiveness in

fostering moral development. Yet the few studies that we have on the effects of organized

youth sports on children’s moral reasoning indicate that participation in moderate to

high contact youth sports have a negative effect (Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, & Cooper,

1986; Conroy et al., 2001).

It appears to us that the organization and professionalization of youth sports coupled

with the lack of attention given to cultivating athletes’ responsibility for fairness at all

levels of all sports (with the notable exceptions of tennis, golf, and Ultimate Frisbee

[Power & Sheehan, 2013]) has rendered sports to be a largely amoral activity. There has

been a broad consensus for some time now that if organized sports are going to inﬂuence

moral reasoning and behavior, those who serve as coaches are going to have to undertake

the task of character education in a deliberate way that is informed by research in moral

development (e.g., Shields and Bredemeier, 1995; National Association for Sport and

Physical Education [NASPE], 2006).

THE RISE OF CHARACTER EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN SPORTS

Character development has been an important goal of organized sports as they took root

in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, in its mission statement at the time of its found-

ing in 1939, Little League Baseball described its purpose as designed “to develop supe-

rior citizens rather than superior athletes” (Chudacoff, 2007, p. 207). Founders of youth

sports organizations believed that sports participation would teach the virtues of loyalty,

hard work, and cooperation; virtues needed for success in the emerging economic order.

At that time, both Protestant and Catholic evangelists also promoted “Muscular Christi-

anity,” an approach to physical education and sports that emphasized masculine virtues

leading to physical as well as moral health (Putney, 2003). Although character develop-

ment continues to be a major aim of youth sport organizations, character education is

now also seen as a remedy for the perceived rise of bad behavior in youth and high school

sports (e.g., Clifford & Feezel, 1997; Lumpkin, Stoll, & Beller, 2002; Martens, 2004; Power

& Sheehan, 2012; Thompson, 1995; Yeager, Baltzell, Buxton, & Bzdell, 2001). Most char-

acter education programs do not present elaborate deﬁnitions of character, but offer

lists of values and recommendations for coaches. Their content typically includes what

Lickona and Davidson (2005) have described as two distinguishable types of character:

ethical and performance. Ethical character includes relational virtues, such as justice and

care, while performance character includes achievement virtues, such as effort and per-

severance.

For example Jim Thompson (1995, 2003), the founder of the Positive Coaching Alli-

ance, one of the largest coach education programs in the country, strongly advocates that

coaches act as character educators. In his ﬁrst book, Positive Coaching: Building Charac-

ter and Self-Esteem through Sports, he describes character as made up of the following

traits: 1) mental toughness; 2) having fun; 3) winning and losing with class; 4) courage;

5) setting and committing to goals (deﬁned in terms of sports skills); and 6) effort

and determination (Thompson, 1995, pp. 113–120). Most of these traits are related to

achievement. The closest trait to a social or moral virtue in his list is winning and losing

with “class,” which means displaying sportsmanship and refusing to cheat to win. In

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 493

his last book, entitled The Power of Double-Goal Coaching: Developing Winners in Sports

and Life, Thompson (2010) puts the development of character on par with winning. He

also gives more emphasis to the moral dimension of character by replacing the concept

of showing “class” with “honoring the game,” which means acting in positive ways that

show respect for one’s self, teammates, opponents, and ofﬁcials.

In his popular Character Counts Sports, Michael Josephson uses the mantra “Victory

with Honor” to temper the quest for winning with an appeal to virtue. Like Thompson,

Josephson recognizes that winning is important, but he cautions that winning should

not be pursued in ways that degrade the self, others, and the sport itself. Josephson and

Thompson rightly frame their character education approaches to sport as an antidote

to the corrosive pursuit of winning at all cost. Josephson’s list of virtues, the “six pillars

of character,” concentrates on moral character virtues, such as “trustworthiness, respect,

caring, and fairness.” Yet Josephson also values performance character by including

under the virtue of responsibility “habits and life skills that lead to success” (Josephson

Institute, 2006).

Thompson and Josephson’s understanding of character as consisting of virtues related

to both high achievement and morality is typical of contemporary character education

approaches (e.g., Lickona, 1992; Ryan & Bohlin, 1999; Vincent, 1999). These approaches

regard moral education as a part of character education. Historically, however, the char-

acter and moral education approaches are somewhat different in the way in which they

understand what virtues mean and how they are prioritized. They also differ in the

emphasis that they give to moral reasoning and democratic deliberation. Moral educa-

tion, as it is currently practiced, grounds itself in Piaget and Kohlberg’s cognitive devel-

opmental approach and in domain theory (e.g., Nucci, 2001 and Turiel, 1983), which

is focused on morality as fairness or justice (Lapsley & Narvaez, 2006; Power & Power,

2012; Nucci, 2009). This approach promotes the development of moral judgment by

presenting children with moral problems involving conﬂicts of interest for discussion

and democratic deliberation. The Play Like a Champion Today approach comes out of

the moral education tradition as it also makes reference to the cardinal virtues of pru-

dence, justice, fortitude, and temperance (Power & Sheehan, 2012).

In the 1980s, political conservatives, such as Secretary of State William Bennett, and

traditionalist social scientists, such as Kevin Ryan and Edward Wynne, aligned to form

the character education movement. Drawing on Aristotle’s virtue theory, they opposed

certain features of the moral education approach and espoused what they regarded as a

more common sense, authority-centered approach to teaching values. Ryan (1989) noted

that in contrast to moral education, the character education movement was eclectic: it

embraced a wide range of moral theories and pedagogical approaches. He maintained,

however, that character education was grounded in tradition and sought to “pass on”

and “preserve” the wisdom of the past rather than “to change the social order” (p. 15).

Finally and perhaps most signiﬁcantly, Ryan noted that the character education move-

ment viewed children as “more malleable” and, therefore, needing “formation” and “a

strong environment” (p. 16). Neither Ryan nor Wynne (1989) saw much value in demo-

cratic class meetings or moral discussions.

Under the inﬂuence of Lickona (1992) and Berkowitz (Berkowitz & Bier, 2005) among

others, the character education movement shifted from opposing the methods of moral

education to endorsing them alongside the traditional methods of didactic instruction

and modeling. Both Lickona and Berkowitz made key contributions to the development

494 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

of moral education theory and practice, and both sought to add to the methods of moral

education more traditional methods of direct instruction and modeling. This eclectic

approach to character education exploded in popularity throughout the 1990s and into

the 2000s as character education gained widespread popular acceptance in public as well

as religious and private schools. The most signiﬁcant challenge that the current character

education movement faces is to maintain an eclectic embrace of different virtues and

pedagogies while providing a coherent and meaningful moral stance. On the contrary,

moral educators going back to Kohlberg (1981) put a clear priority on the virtue of

justice before all other virtues (Power & Power, 2012). In fact, drawing from Aristotle as

well as Kant, moral educators maintain that achievement virtues are only virtues if they

are rooted in virtue of justice. The desire to win at sports can be so strong that achieve-

ment virtues that lead to success, such as hard work, perseverance, and self-sacriﬁce can

easily become detached from justice.

One of the most sobering studies of the win-at-all cost mentality is a well-known

study of cheating conducted by Bob Goldman in the mid-1990s (Bamberger & Yaeger,

1997). He asked 198 Olympic- or near-Olympic-level athletes to respond to two scen-

arios:

1. You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance, with two guarantees:

a) You will not be caught; b) You will win.

Would you take the substance?

2. You are offered a banned performance-enhancing substance that comes with

two guarantees: a) You will not be caught; b) You will win every competition

you enter for the next ﬁve years and then you will die from the side-effects of

the substance.

Would you take it?

Goldman found that 193 of the athletes reported that they would cheat in the ﬁrst scen-

ario and over half would cheat in the second (Bamberger & Yaeger, 1997). Much atten-

tion has been focused on the fact that more than half of these athletes were willing to

die for a medal. Yet should we be surprised that elite athletes who had already dedicated

so much of their lives to attain the heights they had would be willing to make the ulti-

mate sacriﬁce? Too little attention has been given to the fact that almost all of the

athletes would be willing to cheat to win a medal if they could get away with it. How

important is the virtue of honesty relative to other achievement-related virtues in

sports? Is honesty the same kind of virtue as perseverance or courage?

Many of the character education programs that emphasize the development of virtues

fail to take into account the distinctiveness of the virtue of justice and related moral

virtues, such as honesty. The moral virtues bind categorically. Achievement related

virtues are desirable in our culture but justice is obligatory in any culture. In the realm

of sports where winning is so highly valued and rewarded, the achievement virtues are

understandably emphasized. Character educators need to do more than advocate for lists

of virtues. They need to put a priority on justice as the foundation for all virtue.

One implication of giving a priority to the virtue of justice is making clear that

coaches should not allow injured athletes to risk further injury by continuing to practice

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 495

or play. Under the guise of building virtue by “toughening up their athletes,” coaches

often encourage their players to shake off injuries or to conceal them so they are not con-

sidered “soft” or lazy. A study by the Minnesota State Athletic Union revealed that over

21% of the athletes said that they had been pressured to play with an injury. As we are

learning more about the risks of concussions, increased efforts are being made to educate

coaches about their responsibilities to protect their players. It is important, however, that

these efforts be grounded in a moral concern (i.e., fairness to the athlete) and not simply

in a prudential concern to avoid the legal ramiﬁcations of negligence.

Giving a priority to justice also means that, whatever motivational or disciplinary

value coaches may think that physical punishments have, the inﬂiction of pain is abusive

and a violation of athletes’ right to their physical integrity. Many coaches justify the use

of such punishments as character-building and a time-honored part of sports culture.

Yet the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (2009) calls them “inap-

propriate” and educationally “unsound” (p. 2).

Character educators face an even greater challenge in defending children’s basic rights

to play and to engage in activities that promote their health and physical development.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that children have a “right to

engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child” (Article 31).

Recently the US Department of Education (2013) issued a directive declaring that sports

are a “civil right” and that schools receiving federal aid should make accommodations

to provide access to sports for children with disabilities. Secretary of Education Arnie

Duncan (2013) argued that all children should be able to reap not only the health-related

beneﬁts of physical activity but the character beneﬁts of sports participation:

Sports can provide invaluable lessons in discipline, selﬂessness, passion and courage,

and this guidance will help schools ensure that students with disabilities have an

equal opportunity to beneﬁt from the life lessons they can learn on the playing ﬁeld

or on the court.

(p. 1)

At the most basic level, fairness demands that regardless of their abilities or disabili-

ties athletes have an equal opportunity to participate in sports. Yet organized sports at

all levels favor some children and adolescents at the expense of others. This is most

obvious when considering the difference family income makes to children’s access to

playgrounds and athletic facilities as well as to sports equipment, clinics, summer

camps, and, of course, sports teams. However, income is not the only factor in deter-

mining the opportunity to play sports in the United States. Many youth sport organiza-

tions permit children of perceived low ability to be cut from teams or given little or no

playing time. Not only is it unfair to exclude children from sports participation, it is

also unwise from a talent development perspective. Throughout childhood and into

early adolescence, sports organizations should be taking a long-term perspective on

athletic development by keeping sports fun, avoiding premature talent identiﬁcation,

and helping all children to achieve their potential (Balyi, 2001).

Perhaps the single most important contribution that character education can make to

youth and high school sports in America is to confront the injustices built into the struc-

ture of organized youth and high school sports. All children deserve access to the psycho-

logical as well as physiological beneﬁts of sports. All children deserve the opportunity to

496 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

play and to develop the virtues of fairness and honesty as well as courage and friendship

on the sports ﬁeld. If character education through sport programs are to adequately

address the win-at-all-cost mentality that corrodes the culture of sports today, they

cannot emphasize performance character at the expense of ethical character.

THE ROLE OF THE COACH

Ideally, coaches should be mentor-teachers, who focus on developing each player. In the

mentor-teacher role, the adult’s responsibility is to introduce the experience of different

sports to children so that children can play those sports on their own. Typically, parents

serve as children’s ﬁrst mentor-teachers. They not only instruct their children by helping

them to learn basic sports skills, such as throwing or kicking a ball, but they also initiate

children into the culture of a particular sport by watching games with them on television,

taking them to ball parks to cheer on local teams, and acquainting them with the lore

and heroes of the sport. This mentor-teaching role is very different from the managerial

role that coaches play from the earliest youth sport level through college. As managers,

coaches become the primary participants in children’s games. They compete along with

their players and they experience all of the emotions of competitors, becoming elated

when their team wins and dejected when they lose. In fact, many coaches often feel these

emotions more poignantly than young athletes.

When coaches become managers, winning may become increasingly important to

them. As managers, they exercise almost complete control of their players. They assign

players to positions; they design strategies in practices and orchestrate their execution

during games from the sidelines; they decide who plays and when in order to maximize

their competitive advantage. It is no wonder that many coaches become so consumed

by their role as managers that they become confused about who they are serving, the

athletes or their own ego.

Youth sport coaches should be child-centered and focus on helping children to develop

their skills and enjoy the sport. However, as managers, they often become demanding and

imperious; even to the point of berating and punishing their own players (see Shields et

al., 2005). Coaches do not always set out to be managers; they are often the victims of a

sports culture gone amuck. For example, starting his youth sport coaching career deter-

mined to “do it the right way,” “place sportsmanship ahead of winning,” and “involve all

the kids,” volunteer Buzz Bissinger admitted that he quickly became the coach he vowed

not to be:

I could see the pathology that was overcoming me, the sickness of winning and

having my stomach ache when we didn’t win. The sickness of ﬁve-minute car rides

home with my son that seemed like ﬁve hours, as I went through the litany of all the

things he had done wrong. The sickness of seeing the frustration and tears in his eyes

as he was forced to listen to my addled concept of what I thought it meant to be a

coaching parent.

(Bissinger, 2008, p. 1)

There are two ways in which character educators can respond to the toxic culture of

organized sports: the way of compromise and the way of confrontation. Most coach

education programs take the way of compromise, which accepts the legitimacy of the

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 497

coach’s managerial role and adds to it the role of character educator. This way, which is

implicit in slogans like “Double-Goal Coaching” and “Victory with Honor” does not

force coaches to choose between winning and meeting the needs of children but holds

out the promise that they can pursue both.

We believe that coaches must take the less traveled way of confrontation. This means

presenting coaches at the youth sport level with an either-or decision about their primary

aim, either coach to win or coach to develop each child. Those who choose to coach to

win or who do not want to have to choose between them are better suited to coach at

the high school, college, and professional levels. Children at the youth sport level deserve

coaches who are committed to player development before all else. This does not mean

that they should not care about winning. It does mean that all of their decisions should

be aimed at developing each player and that they should not put one player’s develop-

ment over another’s.

The litmus test for whether youth sport coaches are mentor-teachers is how they dis-

tribute playing-time. Giving children equal playing-time is a matter of justice and must

be the bedrock of any educational approach to character. We cannot in good conscience

maintain that sports contribute to children’s development and deny some children the

opportunity to play. No child’s well-being, health, possible future athletic attainments,

and character development should be sacriﬁced for the sake of winning and success.

The data very clearly shows that children rank playing for fun far ahead of winning as

a reason for playing sports (Hyman, 2010; Seefeldt, Ewing, & Walk, 1992). Moreover, it

makes little moral or educational sense to demand that children at an early stage of their

athletic development “earn” the privilege of playing by demonstrating the very qualities

(e.g., hard work, courage, and perseverance) that they are in the process of developing.

THE RELATION BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND ETHICAL CHARACTER

Giving primacy to the virtue of justice and distinguishing moral from achievement

virtues does not imply that what Lickona and Davidson call ethical and performance

character are unrelated. Studies of athletes using achievement goal theory (Duda & Hall,

2001) ﬁnd that athletes’ goal orientations are correlated to socio-moral judgment and

behavior (e.g., Duda, 2001; Duda & Balaguer, 2007; Kavussanu and Ntoumanis, 2003;

Kavussanu and Roberts, 2001; Sage, Kavussanu, & Duda, 2006). Achievement goal theory

identiﬁes two contrasting motivational orientations: task and ego. An individual with

a task orientation sets self-referenced goals, for example, to increase one’s number of

rebounds or decrease one’s turnovers. A person with an ego orientation sets social com-

parison goals, such as demonstrating superiority over others by winning (or not losing).

Research shows that ego-oriented athletes are more likely to cheat and to engage in reck-

less aggression than task-oriented athletes (Duda & Balaguer, 2007). Achievement goal

research also shows while all athletes care about winning and losing, athletes vary on the

extent to which they incorporate task and ego goals in their self-evaluations.

COMPETITION

Shields and Bredemeier (2009) argue there is a point in which an obsessive desire to

win can actually undermine the competitive spirit itself. They deﬁne this willingness to

do whatever it takes to win as decompetition, not “true competition.” Decompetition

498 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

undermines intrinsic motivation by substituting the enjoyment of the play of sports

themselves for the tangible (e.g., money) or intangible (maintaining self-worth) extrin-

sic rewards that come from winning. Decompetition can also undermine moral motiva-

tion by detaching winning from fairness.

Far more research is needed to examine how athletes think about winning in rela-

tion to achieving mastery, and playing fairly. Duda (2001) ﬁnds that the task and ego

orientations are not mutually exclusive. Athletes can be and often are high on both.

Research is needed to determine how athletes achieve a balance between these goals and

how considerations of fairness factor into both orientations. The task and ego measure,

the Task and Ego Orientation in Sport Questionnaire (TEOSC), does not address issues

of fairness or rule-following explicitly. The measure assesses the criteria that athletes

use in assessing the conditions under which they feel the most successful. Moreover,

the measure does not directly assess how athletes manage to balance these two orien-

tations when competing. Presumably those who choose to participate in sports value

competition and enjoy it. The orientations give us some insight into what athletes value

about the sport and what it is about the competition that brings value. From the per-

spective of Aristotle’s theory of ethics, competitiveness in sports is virtuous if athletes

put the quality of their play ahead of the outcome. What is distinctive about perform-

ance character in sports as distinct from performance character in school is that the

goal of playing well is inherently related to playing to win. For example, a task-oriented

basketball player will feel most successful when she is putting forth her best effort and

playing as well as she can.

Playing well in competition cannot be completely self-referenced; it will entail coun-

tering the moves of the opposition. In individual sports, like gymnastics, ﬁgure skating,

and swimming, task-oriented athletes are able to focus on their own performance

without having to pay much attention to what their opponents are doing. In either indi-

vidual or team sports, striving to win does not take away from the virtue of competing

well. In fact, in most situations striving to win is involved in playing well. Striving to win

is actually a part of the implicit social contract that athletes enter into when they decide

to play a competitive sport. In their review of the achievement goal literature, Duda and

Balaguer (2007) ﬁnd task but not ego orientation consistently predicts sport attitudes

and behavior. One explanation for this is that there may be a positive and negative type

of ego orientation. The positive type complements the task orientation by valuing com-

petitive success as a way of demonstrating competence; the negative type is based on a

fear that losing will reveal a lack of competence (Duda & Balaguer, 2007).

Although playing to win is a part of a virtuous competitive mindset, whether one

actually wins is in an Aristotelian framework a consequent end or bonus. Aristotle makes

this point in distinguishing a good craftsperson from a person of good character. The

good craftsperson is judged exclusively by the quality of her or his product. The person

of character, on the other hand, is judged by the quality of her or his actions and inten-

tions, whether or not they achieve their desired results. Virtuous athletes understand

playing well, which includes playing competitively, as their highest goal.

It is understandable that athletes who attach more importance to the outcome of

competition than they do the quality of their performance may be more prone to cheat

or engage in irresponsible aggressive play (Duda & Balaguer, 2007). On the other hand,

many athletes with a high ego orientation still accept the constraints of rules and moral

norms in competition. Rules are constitutive of games themselves and moral norms

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 499

assure that games are safe for all parties. No matter how badly they want to win or hate

to lose, when athletes enter into competition, they implicitly enter into a social contract

in which they agree to abide by the rules and observe principles of fair play and mutual

respect. Cultivating a performance character can help them to enjoy their athletic experi-

ence more by focusing their attention on what they can control and detaching their sense

of worth from whether they win or lose.

Lickona and Davidson (2005) rightly argue that a task orientation is an important

component of performance character. Achievement goal research demonstrates that

coaches’ goal orientations play a critical role in establishing the motivational climate on

their team. This climate in turn has a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on athletes’ goal orientation,

moral behavior, and attitudes (Duda & Balaguer, 2007; Kavussanu, 2007; Kavussanu &

Ntoumanis, 2003; Miller, Roberts, & Ommundsen, 2005; Roberts, 2001).

Duda and Balaguer (2007) point out that coaches’ ego orientation is a far more

signiﬁcant problem for moral functioning than athletes’ ego orientation. Coaches with

a strong ego orientation undermine athletes’ pursuit of either achievement or moral

virtues by focusing on winning rather than on their players’ development. It is clear from

a growing body of achievement goal research that if coaches are to be effective charac-

ter educators they should curb their own ego orientation and cultivate a motivational

climate with a high task orientation. Such a climate will directly promote the develop-

ment of achievement-related virtues and indirectly support the development of moral

virtues.

GAME REASONING AND MORAL IDENTITY

The competitive nature of sports can lead not only to a strong ego orientation but also

to a negative sports identity. As Bredemeier and Shields (1986b) have argued, sports,

particularly contact sports, may lead athletes to adopt two different identities, one for off

the ﬁeld and one for on the ﬁeld. In a study comparing male and female college basket-

ball players with college students who were not athletes, they found that the athletes’

reasoning on moral sport dilemmas was signiﬁcantly lower than their reasoning on non-

sport moral dilemmas. They described those athletes using lower stage moral reasoning

as engaging in “game reasoning,” which allows them to operate in an almost “morality

free zone.” Bredemeier and Shields (1986b) also referred to the attenuated experience of

moral norms within the context of a game as a “bracketed morality.” A bracketed moral-

ity is one in which athletes feel free to act in self-interested and highly aggressive ways

that would not be permissible outside of the game. Weiss, Smith, and Stuntz (2008) give

a shocking example of this phenomenon from an interview with NFL football player

Brian Cox:

When I’m on the ﬁeld, I think about causing as much pain to the person lined up

across from me as possible. During the three hours of the game on Sunday evening,

I ﬁgure I can commit as many crimes as I want without going to jail.

(p. 198)

Although some sports can release some athletes from moral constraints and excuse

cheating, reckless aggression, and even cruelty, sports need not necessarily lead to a split

sense of identity or to anomie. Some athletes may be drawn to sports or recruited to

500 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

play certain positions in contact sports because they are unusually aggressive, prone to

anger, lacking in empathy, or uninhibited. In the absence of responsible coaches and a

strong team moral atmosphere, sports, like football and rugby, can provide them with

an outlet and even social approval for rough play. Sports clearly have the potential to

lead athletes down a path that inhibits the development of their moral reasoning and of

a moral identity. Sports can lead other athletes to think of themselves as playing a role

on the ﬁeld, which is different from who they are off the ﬁeld. Blasi (1993, 2009)

describes identity as a developmental process of self-integration, which underlies dif-

ferent social selves. Although individuals may describe themselves as having different

selves in different social contexts, character education should help athletes to construct

a core identity that uniﬁes their athletic persona. For example, a college football player

explained that although he was highly aggressive on the ﬁeld, he was not the “kind of

person” who would take a cheap shot to intimidate a receiver. Acknowledging that he

had been guided by a morally principled coach, he said he took personal pride in trying

to follow the “golden rule” by treating his opponents as he would like to be treated.

We have precious little research on how sports participation inﬂuences pre-adolescent

and adolescent identity formation. This is surprising because sports play such a signi-

ﬁcant role in the lives of so many children and adolescents. It is also troublesome because

in a sports-crazed society, children can become local and even national celebrities for

their precocious athletic prowess. Early stardom comes with a price. Children and ado-

lescents are not psychologically prepared to have adults fawning all over them because of

their early athletic success. Character development becomes a challenge for children and

adolescents, who may come to believe that they are so exceptional that they do not have

to abide by the same rules as others. In order to help children and adolescents to develop

a moral identity through participation, character educators must address the culture in

which children and athletes develop their identities. In our view, children and adoles-

cents are best served in a culture that de-emphasizes exceptional athletic achievements

and focuses instead on helping all children to focus on how they can serve others and

develop themselves.

ESTABLISHING A TEAM MORAL ATMOSPHERE

Research in moral education suggests that the key to developing individuals’ moral identity

and moral functioning more generally is to focus on the moral atmosphere of the sports

team (Power & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2005). As important as developing a proper moti-

vational climate may be, care should be taken to distinguish a motivational climate from

a moral atmosphere (Kavassanu, 2007; Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989). A motivational

climate cannot substitute for a moral atmosphere. A moral atmosphere relates to those

features of the social environment that directly inﬂuence athletes’ moral functioning: their

moral judgments, responsibility, and behavior. Extrapolating from what has been learned

from studies of the just community schools (Power, 2002; Power et al., 1989; Power &

Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2008; Power & Power, 2012; Shields et al., 2002) as well as what we

are now learning from our Play Like a Champion coaching clinics, the key to establishing

a moral atmosphere is to have coaches focus on issues of fairness and team building. Con-

cretely this means taking time to address issues such as how to treat referees and opponents

with respect and how to become a good citizen of the team. It also means giving athletes a

signiﬁcant role to play in decision-making about team rules and discipline.

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 501

Power et al. (1989) argued that the peer culture is a key component of moral atmo-

sphere. The peer culture arises out of the interaction of the members of a group. As

Power et al. (1989) showed, peer groups set expectations for how members should

behave and these expectations vary in the extent to which they reﬂect moral values. For

example, it is commonplace for adolescents to put pressure on each other to exclude

those who are deemed “unpopular” or outside of their clique. On the other hand, many

sports teams encourage players to be friendly to everyone. Sports teams provide an ideal

environment for establishing norms of caring and shared responsibility because teams

bring individuals together to pursue common goals. With proper direction and support

from coaches, sports teams can become truly moral communities with shared norms of

caring, trust, collective responsibility, and participation (Power & Power, 2012). Research

on socio-moral development shows that somewhere between the ages of 11 and 14 most

adolescents develop their ﬁrst understanding of a group as a whole greater than the sum

of its parts. Membership in a group offers a sense of purpose as well as a sense of belong-

ing (Damon, 2008). Sports teams may well be the best resource character educators have

for developing civic virtues, such as loyalty and sacriﬁce for the group. Coaches have a

unique opportunity to help their players to experience what it means to be a respons-

ible citizen by taking the time to deliberate with them about how to put the common

good before their private interests while also respecting the rights of each member of the

team.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COACH EDUCATION

Research has established that coach education signiﬁcantly improves children’s sports

experience. Most of the existing research has been undertaken by Smoll and Smith and

their colleagues (Barnett, Smoll, & Smith, 1992; Coatsworth & Conroy, 2006; Conroy &

Coatsworth, 2004; Smith, Smoll, & Barnett, 1995; Smith, Smoll, & Curtis, 1979; Smith,

Smoll, & Cumming, 2007; Smoll, Smith, Barnett, & Everett, 1993) using the Coach Effec-

tiveness Training approach (CET) and a revision of CET, the MAC (Mastery Approach to

Coaching), which is based on motivational climate research (e.g., Duda & Balaguer, 2007).

This body of research indicates that coach training can be used effectively to increase the

amount of encouragement and verbal rewards that coaches give their players. Young

athletes perceived trained coaches as engaging in more positive verbal behaviors, in less

negative verbal behaviors, and in more mastery behaviors than untrained coaches. In

addition, youth playing for the trained coaches liked their coaches more, perceived their

coaches as liking them more, reported sports improved their self-esteem, helped them to

feel less anxious, had lower dropout rates, and demonstrated motivational gains.

In a study sponsored by the LA’84 Foundation, Power and Seroczynski (2013) inves-

tigated the effectiveness of a coach education program designed speciﬁcally for charac-

ter development. Coaches of boys’ and girls’ basketball in public middle schools were

instructed in the Play Like a Champion Today coaching approach, which emphasizes

establishing teams as moral communities through conducting moral discussions before

and after practice. The trained coaches were given a manual with sports-related moral

scenarios addressing socio-moral issues, such as how to treat an unpopular player on

the team or whether players should take the risk of trusting their teammates on “help

defense.” Players on the teams with trained coaches perceived their coaches as putting a

greater emphasis on moral values and developing a sense of fairness than those on teams

502 s F.C. Power and K.K. Sheehan

with untrained coaches. Players on the teams with trained coaches also described their

experiences on the team as more fun. Most importantly, the players on teams with trained

coaches reported that they thought more about fairness and learned more about taking

responsibility over the season than did their peers on teams with untrained coaches.

No signiﬁcant differences were found in players’ moral reasoning although the teams

with coaches who held discussions lasting at least 20 minutes and involved most of their

players showed modest gains in moral reasoning over a season lasting only two months.

No differences were found in players’ self-reports of their own moral behavior or sports-

manship. This is not surprising given that previous research indicated that moral discus-

sions must generally be sustained over several months to be effective (Higgins, 1980;

Schlaeﬂi, Rest, & Thoma, 1985).

This study has important implications for character education for three reasons.

First, it shows that a character-oriented coaching clinic can lead coaches to engage in

deliberate practices designed to promote moral awareness and development. Second,

it shows that coaches can be taught to help players have a more enjoyable and morally

engaged experience. Although much can be accomplished in a three-hour clinic, more

time was needed to communicate the concepts and develop the skills necessary to

foster the development of moral reasoning and behavior. Ideally, shorter, follow-up

clinics should be provided for coaches to achieve greater mastery of the discussion

approach. Third, it demonstrates that in order for coaches to educate for ethical char-

acter, they need to set aside time for team meeting discussions. To date, the only suc-

cessful moral education interventions have been most successful in physical education

classes and camp settings that are removed from the pressures of a competitive sports

season (e.g., Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields, & Shewchuck, 1986; Hellison, 2003; Romance,

Weiss, & Brockovan, 1986). This study suggests that coaches can fruitfully incorporate

team moral discussions into a competitive sports season. Future research is needed

to investigate the effects of using moral discussions with different teams and over

multiple seasons.

CONCLUSION

With direction and support from well-prepared coaches, participation in sports can and

should help children and adolescents to develop moral as well as achievement virtues.

In order for sports to realize their character education potential, coaches, particularly

at the youth sport level, need to put the development of their players before winning.

Character educators must confront a managerial mentality pervasive at all levels of sport

in which coaches control children rather than teach or mentor them. Sports are meant

to be played for the sheer fun of the experience, and children can reap the full beneﬁts

of sports only if they have control over their own games. Although character educators

must focus on what virtues should be taught and how they should be taught, they also

take responsibility for assuring that all children have a fair opportunity to play sports. At

present, the income inequalities present in the adult society are reﬂected in youth and

high school sports. While opportunities for afﬂuent children to play sports are growing,

opportunities for poor children are declining. Poor children are not the only children

who are losing out. Children are cut from teams and sit on benches because they are

perceived to lack the skills and abilities of others. Character educators ought to advocate

for the rights of all children to enjoy playing sports and to develop their skills.

Moral and Character Education Through Sports s 503

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507

A THEORETICAL AND EVIDENCE-BASED APPROACH FOR

DESIGNING PROFESSIONAL ETHICS EDUCATION

Muriel J. Bebeau and Verna E. Monson

This chapter provides a guided reﬂection on the state of theory, research, and practice

for ethics education in the professions. We begin with an evidence-based theoretical

approach to ground professional ethics education, followed by an overview of the nature

of professionalism in society that includes a brief history of the ethics education move-

ment. We then review the general status of ethics education, including changes in accred-

itation standards followed by current educational practices in medicine, dentistry. law,

nursing, and veterinary medicine. Next, alternative options for assessing and promoting

the broadly deﬁned capacities speciﬁed by psychological theory are cited and reviewed.

Last, we offer recommendations for enhancing ethics and professionalism education in

the health professions and law to meet emerging accreditation guidelines that focus on

outcome assessment.

A THEORETICAL APPROACH TO PROFESSIONAL ETHICS EDUCATION

Rest (1983) extended Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning development, ﬁrst by design-

ing an easy-to-score and administer measure of moral judgment (Rest, 1979) and then

by deﬁning the Four Component Model (FCM) of Morality to explain how cognition,

affect, and social dynamics interact to inﬂuence moral action (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, &

Thoma, 1999). Table 29.1 provides an operational deﬁnition for each component (we

refer to them as capacities or abilities) and describes their interactive nature. Their par-

ticular relevance for professional ethical development is described below.

The Four Component Model (FCM): Implications for the Professions

MORAL SENSITIVITY

For individuals being socialized to professional practice, ethical sensitivity involves the

ability to see things from the perspective of other individuals and groups (including other

Table 29.1 The Four Component Model of Morality

Starting with the question “How does moral behavior come about?” Rest (1983) suggested that the literature supports at least four component processes, all of

which must be activated for moral behavior to come about. The four components are a useful way to conceptualize the capacities required for effective moral

functioning.

Moral Sensitivity

Moral sensitivity focuses on the interpretation of a situation, the various actions that are available, and how each action might affect the self and others. It involves

imaginatively constructing possible scenarios (often from limited cues and partial information), knowing cause–consequence chains of events in the real world,

and having empathy and role-taking skills. Both cognitive processes (perception, appraisal, and interpretation) and affective arousal (e.g., anger, apathy, anxiety,

empathy, and revulsion) contribute to the interpretation of problematic situations.

Moral Judgment

Once a person is aware that various lines of action are possible, one must ask which line of action is more morally justiﬁed. This is the process emphasized in the work

of Piaget and Kohlberg. Even at an early stage, people have intuitions about what is fair and moral, and make moral judgments about even the most complex of human

activities. The psychologist’s job is to understand how these intuitions arise and what governs their application to real-world events. The educator’s job is to

understand how best to promote reasoning development, especially for students who have not developed the ability prior to professional education.

Moral Motivation and Commitment

Moral motivation and commitment involves prioritizing moral values over other personal values. People have many values (e.g., careers, affectional relationships,

aesthetic preferences, institutional loyalties, hedonistic pleasures, excitement). Whether the individual gives priority to moral concerns seems to be a function of

how deeply moral notions penetrate self-understanding, that is, whether moral considerations are judged constitutive of the self (Blasi, 1984). For behavior to

occur, the moral agents must ﬁrst decide on a morally correct action when faced with a dilemma, and then conclude that the self is responsible for that action.

One is motivated to perform an action just because the self is at stake and on the line—just because the self is responsible. Moral motivation is a function of an

internal drive for self-consistency. Blasi (1991) argues: “The self is progressively moralized when the objective values that one apprehends become integrated

within the motivational and affective systems of personality and when these moral values guide the construction of self concept and one’s identity as a person.”

Moral Character and Competence

Moral character and competence is having the strength of your convictions, having courage, persisting, overcoming distractions and obstacles, having implementing

skills, and having ego strength. A person may be sensitive to moral issues, have good judgment, and prioritize moral values; but if he or she is lacking in moral

character and competence, he or she may wilt under pressure or fatigue, may not follow through, may be distracted or discouraged, and moral behavior will fail. This

component presupposes that one has set goals, has self-discipline and controls impulse, and has the strength and skill to act in accord with one’s goals.

It is noteworthy that the model is not conceived as a linear problem-solving model. For example, moral motivation may affect moral sensitivity, and moral character

may constrain moral motivation. In fact, Rest (1983) makes clear the interactive nature of the components. Furthermore, and in contrast to other models of moral

function that focus on the traditional three domains—cognitions, affect, and behavior—the Four Component Model of Morality assumes that cognition and affect

co-occur in all areas of moral functioning. Thus, moral action is not simply the result of separate affective and cognitive processes operating as part of an interaction.

Instead, each of the four components is a mix of affective and cognitive processes that contribute to the component’s primary function.

Source: Adapted from Bebeau (2006); Bebeau, Rest, and Narvaez (1999).

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 509

cultural

and socioeconomic groups), and more abstractly, from legal, institutional, and

organizational perspectives. It includes knowing the regulations, codes, and norms of

one’s profession, and recognizing when they apply. This process highlights the idea that

moral behavior can only occur if the professional codes the situation as moral.

Moral Judgment

Because professional practice is essentially a moral enterprise in which new issues fre-

quently arise with societal change and technological advances, the ability to reason care-

fully about the dilemmas of one’s profession is an essential capacity for practitioners.

Rest and colleagues (1999) advanced the application of Kohlbergian stage theory to

professional education by deﬁning and validating three schemas associated with moral

thinking in adults: the personal interest schema, characterized by decisions motivated by

self-interest and/or a concern for interpersonal reciprocity; maintaining norms schema,

focused on enforcement of existing norms, rules, codes, and laws; and the postconven-

tional schema, centered on concepts of justice, fairness, duty, and the evolutionary nature

of morality in society and in the professions. Recent interest in applying schema theory

to professional education has centered on providing the individual with a baseline proﬁle

indicating which moral schema is predominant for the individual at entry to profes-

sional school, then providing post-test information to show whether the educational

program has facilitated development (Bebeau & Faber-Langendoen, 2014). Of particular

interest in professions education is the documented relation between advances in moral

reasoning measured by life-span measures like Rest’s (1979) Deﬁning Issues Test (DIT)

and profession-speciﬁc measures of ethical reasoning (Bebeau & Thoma, 1999; Thoma,

Bebeau & Bolland, 2008).

Moral Motivation and Commitment

Concerns for the development of a professional identity are the focus of two lines of

research. One adapts Robert Kegan’s (1982) theory of life-span identity formation to

professional identity formation (Bebeau & Monson, 2012; Bebeau & Thoma, 2013; For-

sythe, 2005; Hamilton & Monson, 2012; Rule & Bebeau, 2005). A second ﬂows from

philosophers’ observations of models of professionalism that appear to guide moral

action (Bebeau, Born, & Ozar; 1993; Thoma & Bebeau, 2013). Although applicants to

the professions typically state their interest and commitment to becoming a professional,

Bertolami (2004) notes that seldom during the course of professional education are stu-

dents encouraged to reﬂect on this initial commitment to professionalism or to reﬁne it

based upon new understandings that emerge during professional education. Conﬁrming

this lack of attention to professional identity formation during professional education,

Lee Shulman (2010) remarked in the preface to Education Physicians, the last of the

Carnegie Foundation’s recent studies of ﬁve professions (law, medicine, clergy, engineers,

and nurses) that the most overlooked aspect of professional preparation was “the forma-

tion of a professional identity with a moral core of service and responsibility around

which each student’s habits of mind and practice are organized” (p. ix).

Moral Character and Competence

For the professional, technical competence, problem solving, interpersonal skills, and

characterological dispositions must come together to implement an effective action.

Bandura (1977) explains how cognition and affect interact when facing a challenging

510 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

problem. A person who sees a task as “fun” or “challenging,” is more likely to persist

to resolve a problem. Conversely, if a problem is approached with dread, perseverance

is less likely. Practice in resolving difﬁcult and recurrent problems—like responding to

an angry patient, or discussing a disciplinary issue with an offending peer—changes

the expectations of efﬁcacy, which in turn changes behavior. Apathy and cynicism arise

when students can’t ﬁgure out how to effectively implement professional expectations.

In research ethics education, such “survival skills” are deemed critical to the responsible

conduct of research (Institute of Medicine [IOM], 2002b, p. 105).

Dynamic Processes of the FCM

Rest saw the processes encompassed by the FCM as distinctive, yet dynamic in nature.

A wide range of studies (e.g., Bebeau, 2002; Thoma, 1994) show that moral judgment

development predicts pro-social behavior; yet it predicts only 10–15% of the variance.

Other processes, particularly component 3 (moral motivation and commitment)—what

Blasi (1984) refers to as the development of the moral self and Kegan (1994) refers to the

development of an identity—appear to be the primary driver of moral action (Thoma

& Bebeau, 2013). For example, when dental professionals who have been disciplined

by a licensing board are compared with a sample of dental professionals who consist-

ently demonstrate exemplary moral behavior, those disciplined not only exhibit short-

comings in one or more of Rest’s Four Components, but with few exceptions illustrate

only vague understanding of professional expectations. In contrast, exemplary dentists

can and do spontaneously articulate professional values and expectations. In a similar

vein, Walker and colleagues’ (e.g., Frimer & Walker, 2009) studies illustrate the distinc-

tiveness of moral exemplars’ ability to integrate the personality traits of communion

and agency—something that comparison group participants (ordinary citizens and the

occasional moral hero) cannot do. Frimer and Walker’s (2009) reconciliation model

describes development as the shift from the person’s conscious recognition of a tension

between agency and communion to an active integration of the two. Taken together

these two sets of ﬁndings suggest that moral motivation is furthered when individuals

have a sense of connection between the self and others as well as a conﬁdence in one’s

ability to affect change. The challenge for educators and researchers who wish to further

establish the role each process contributes to moral action must ﬁrst attend to the valid-

ity of measurement. Without well-validated measures, it is not possible to establish the

role each process contributes to moral action.

THE NATURE OF PROFESSIONALISM

Many people in today’s society refer to themselves as professionals, though society gener-

ally distinguishes among occupational groups based upon the presence or absence of par-

ticular attributes (Freidson, 1988; Hall, 1975). Whether a particular occupation actually

qualiﬁes as a “profession,” based upon criteria sociologists advance, makes for interesting

debate. In our view (Bebeau & Monson, 2012), such a debate needs to precede ethics

instruction in a profession, as characteristics of a profession and the expectations of a

professional are not well understood, especially at entry to a profession. We show how to

assess and educate for these understandings. The need for such education is heightened

by environmental and political factors that impact individuals and the professions col-

lectively.

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 511

Many today (e.g., Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009; Cohen, 2006; Hafferty,

Brennan, & Pawlina, 2011; May, 1999; Rule & Welie, 2009) see professions in a state of

crisis. In medicine, access to health care has been addressed through the Affordable Care

Act (H.R. 3590–111th Congress: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 2009), yet

the gap in public health outcomes by level of education and race has widened in the

last two decades (Olshansky et al., 2012), despite the steadily increasing amount the US

spent on health care (Berwick & Hackbarth, 2012). Dentistry, having exempted itself

from government programs such as Medicare, has neither addressed access to care or

cost containment (Rule & Welie, 2009). In law, the failure to control costs has resulted in

the outsourcing of legal services, which in turn results in a decline in available jobs for

recent graduates—yet there is a paucity of affordable legal services for the nation’s most

poor and vulnerable (Landsman, 2009). Mann (2006) argues for “the development of

a sociological consciousness, interdisciplinary thinking, and understanding of the eco-

nomic and political dimensions of health care” (p. 167). Advancing the scholarship of

teaching and learning in ethics education has as its ﬁrst goal to develop good profes-

sionals, and as its second goal to develop good professionals who work collectively to

advance the public good.

The Ethics Education Movement: A Brief History

In the health professions, the push for ethics education originated with technological

advances in medicine that foreshadowed new and emerging problems for health care

providers. The goals of professional ethics education were ﬁrst articulated by Bok (1976),

and promoted by the Hastings Center (1980)—one of the ﬁrst centers organized to focus

on applied ethics, and ethics at bedside. In 1982, Rest was invited to introduce his Four

Component Model of Morality in the Hastings Center Report (Rest, 1982). Interest-

ingly, the ﬁrst three of Rest’s components (sensitivity, reasoning, and motivation) are

analogous to the goals Bok and the Hastings Center articulated—the need to develop

moral perceptions and aspirations, in addition to moral reasoning. Absent from Bok’s

vision is emphasis on Rest’s Fourth Component—variously described as character and

competence or implementation.

In the early days of ethics education in the health professions, the predominant

method for resolving ethical issues (Beauchamp & Childress, 1979—now in its sixth

edition) was application of principles (autonomy, beneﬁcence, nonmaleﬁcence, and

distributive justice) to the resolution of tough problems. If assessment of ethical deci-

sion making occurred, the methods were those typical of courses in philosophy—the

analysis of written argument. Some alliances were formed between medical educators

and moral psychologists in the late 1970s and a number of studies using Kohlber-

gian measures to assess moral judgment of medical students and physicians began

to appear in the literature (e.g., Candee, Sheehan, Cook, Husted, & Bargen, 1982;

Sheehan, Candee, Willms, Donnelly, & Husted, 1985). As we review the status of ethics

education in the professions today, we see pockets of moral psychology’s inﬂuence,

sometimes in the structure and organization of ethics educational programs (e.g.,

Bebeau, 1994; Duckett & Ryden, 1994; Hamilton, 2008; IOM, 2002b), more often in

efforts to assess the effects of instruction (Baldwin & Self, 2006; Bebeau 2002, 2006,

2009a, 2009b; Rest & Narvaez, 1994). What is quite clear, however, is that unlike moral

education in elementary and secondary education where moral psychologists have

been the driving force behind the design and assessment of moral education (Lapsley

512 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

& Narvaez, 2006), educators with grounding in moral philosophy and ethics have been

the driving force behind much of professional ethics education (Doukas, McCullough,

& Wear, 2010; 2012). As has been argued elsewhere (Bebeau, Rest, & Narvaez, 1999),

grounding education and assessment in a view that knowledge, skills, and attitudes are

the processes that give rise to morality is less helpful than a vision like the FCM that

helps to deﬁne researchable variables and create authentic measures of professional

ethical development and performance.

In contrast to the health professions, the impetus for ethics education in law was

the egregious conduct of lawyers in the Watergate scandal (Graham, 1997). The

typical approach to teaching professional responsibility courses in law (note they are

not referred to as ethics courses) is to read opinions from appellate cases, judgments

from the deliberations by association ethics committees, and to study state rules of

professional responsibility or code of conduct (usually based on the American Bar

Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct) in preparation for the required

professional responsibility licensing examination. Egan, Kayhan, and Ramirez (2004,

p. 309) note, such “courses suffer from three main shortcomings: they are mostly

rule-based, they seldom venture into actual ethical analysis, and they are often not

taken seriously by students.” In addition, teaching to the profession’s code perpetu-

ates the notion that conduct not prohibited by the rules is ethically permissible. Thus,

rather than promoting professional ideals to which one aspires, the rules serve as the

prevailing ethical norms, rather than the minimum standards that keep you out of

trouble.

As in elementary and secondary education, educators in the professions debate whether

to focus on the individual’s character or on reasoning and problem solving. This ongoing

debate is evident in Volume 10 of Advances in Bioethics (Kenny & Shelton, 2006). As its

title implies (Lost Virtue . . .), the concern is with character formation. Advantages for

the character approach are presented by physician ethicist Ed Pellegrino (2006) whose

work with ethicist David Thomasma (Pellegrino & Thomasma, 1993) provides rich and

useful operational deﬁnitions of the virtues of medical practice. A cogent critique of

virtue ethics as a guide to educational program development is presented by Robert

Veatch (2006). Other chapters argue for other dimensions of development, with no real

resolution to the debate. Of particular interest is the work of Beauchamp and Childress

(2009; sixth edition) whose work over the decades has responded to critiques from the

bioethics community on methods for moral justiﬁcation—particularly the application of

moral principles (referred to as principlism) to resolve moral issues. The current edition

includes an expanded theory of common morality and a reworked theory of the ethic of

care as a form of virtue ethics.

In the last edition of the Handbook of Moral and Character Education (Bebeau

& Monson, 2008), the dominant concern for ethics educators had shifted the debate

from questions of character or ethical competence to a concern for simple adherence

to appropriate behaviors. Predicated on a series of studies (Papadakis, Hodgson, Tehe-

rani, & Kohatsu, 2004; Stern, Frohna, & Gruppen, 2005; Teherani, Hodgson, Banach, &

Papadakis, 2005), educators were able to link behaviors exhibited during medical school

with subsequent disciplinary action by a state licensing board. Such ﬁndings were note-

worthy, as educators had been unable to link GPA and national board examinations (the

available gatekeepers for incompetence) and professional behavior. The Accreditation

Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME, 2013) deﬁned professionalism “as

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 513

manifested through a commitment to carrying out professional responsibilities, adher-

ence to ethical principles, and sensitivity to a diverse patient population.”

Even before the evidence linking behaviors exhibited in medical school with sub-

sequent disciplinary actions, Papadakis, Loeser, and Healy (2001) argued for an adminis-

trative structure to remediate students’ deﬁciencies in behaviors judged as unprofessional.

Yet, it is simply not enough to focus only on the external manifestation of behavior.

In fact, in a closing chapter in Measuring Medical Professionalism, Hafferty (2006) elo-

quently asserted our belief: that tying too much of the assessment of professionalism to

observable behaviors would not address the internalization of professional expectations

reﬂected in Rest’s third component.

[M]edicine must avoid the self-serving inconsistency of claiming to establish profes-

sionalism as an internalized and deep competency while willing to settle for gradu-

ates who manifest it only as a surface phenomenon. Such fence sitting, of course, calls

into question just how core professionalism is to the nature and identity of medicine.

A professionalism that is deep must exist at the level of identity. Surface profession-

alism . . . is nothing more than doing one’s job in a “professional manner.” Surface

professionalism sidesteps issues of identity and treats professionalism as something

physicians can put on and take off like one’s stethoscope. Professionalism as a deep

competency might generate the same behavior, but the behavior in question is more

real/authentic because the behavior is consequentially linked to the social actor’s

underlying identity (as a professional) rather than to how the job was carried out (in

a professional manner).

(p. 283)

Today, we see medical educators (e.g., Jarvis-Selinger, Pratt, & Regehr, 2012) beginning

to embrace Shulman’s call to focus on the identity of the individual—a perspective that

is consistent with the view of moral psychology that the moral self is the link between

knowing and doing. Our work of identity formation (Bebeau & Monson, 2012) illus-

trates that the usual socialization process in the professions doesn’t sufﬁciently develop

either a basic understanding or an internalization of professional expectations.

This is

not to suggest that the measurement of medical professionalism should not be included

as a dimension of assessment of professional competence, but it should not be the only

strategy that focuses students’ attention on appropriate professional behaviors.

STATUS OF ETHICS EDUCATION

The early work of the Hastings Center (1980) deﬁned goals for ethics education that are

in concert with Rest’s evidence-based model of morality. Yet, our reviews of the status

of ethics education across professions (detailed below) reﬂects a surprising lack of con-

sensus on goals and purposes—both across and within professions, signiﬁcant variation

in time devoted to instruction, signiﬁcant variation in content and methods and limited

attention to assessment. This ﬁnding was not surprising in the 1980s, but today nearly

every major medical center has an afﬁliated bioethics center and accreditation organiza-

tions have for some time required instruction in ethics and/or professionalism. Accred-

iting bodies tend to refrain from prescriptive recommendations, thus few institutions

included evidence of the outcomes of ethics education in their self-studies. Today, the

514 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

accountability movement in the US appears to have inﬂuenced the latest accreditation

guidelines for the ﬁve professions we studied.

The situation is similar for graduate medical education. Reviews of residency pro-

grams (Downing, Way, & Caniano, 1997; Mulvey, Ogle-Jewett, Cheng, & Johnson, 2000)

indicated minimal attention to clinical ethics in either surgery or pediatrics, though

such education was deemed desirable. Further, except for the recent appeal to fostering

professional identity formation (Jarvis-Selinger et al., 2012)—which clearly appeals to

Kegan’s constructivist theory of identity formation, and occasional references to the use

of the Deﬁning Issues Test to assess moral judgment development (e.g., the work of Self

and colleagues reviewed by Bebeau, 2002) and two recent studies stemming from Bald-

win’s (Baldwin, Adamson, Self, Sheehan, & Oppenberg, 1996) observation of the relation

between malpractice and moral judgment development for orthopedic surgeons (Bohm

et al., in press; Mercuri, Karia, Egol, & Zuckerman, 2013)—there simply isn’t a consist-

ent appeal to moral psychology for the framing of goals and purposes for ethics educa-

tion. Our ﬁndings are conﬁrmed by a team of medical ethics and humanities educators

(Doukas et al., 2010, 2012) recently convened to advance education in medical ethics and

humanities.

The Need for a Systematic Approach to Ethics Education

What happens if insufﬁcient attention is paid to the theoretical grounding for ethical

decisions? As Shulman concluded, “the moral core around which habits of mind are

organized” is missing. Bebeau and Faber-Langendoen (2014) summarize defenses

offered by advance-level medical students caught cheating in a medical education

course (Clarke, 2011). A subsequent remedial course for these students revealed that

most could not articulate basic expectations of a medical professional even though

they were about to graduate. Others (Editorial, 2006; Rudavsky, 2007; Sherman &

Margolin, 2006, 2007), describe similar breaches of integrity and the amazing justiﬁ-

cations offered. Less blatant, but troubling because they reﬂect shortcomings in ethics

education, two studies reveal shortcomings in ethical competence. Using four hypo-

thetical cases involving end-of-life decision making, Wong, Eiser, Mrtek, and Hecker-

ling (2004) observed that physicians were guided by (1) patient-focused beneﬁcence;

(2) a patient- and surrogate-focused perspective that included risk avoidance; and

(3) best interests of the patient determined by ethical values, rather than self-interest

concerns, such as (a) economic impact on the physician; (b) expediency in resolution

of the situation; and (c) the expense of medical treatment. Whereas the values that

appeared to be inﬂuential determinants of decisions were guided by biomedical prin-

ciples, the participants’ decision methods appeared to resemble casuistry more than

principle-based decision making. Testing actual performance, Gisondi, Smith-Cog-

gins, Harter, Soltysik, and Yarnold (2004) measured the uniformity of ethical decision

making for 30 emergency medicine residents using ﬁve high-ﬁdelity simulations. In

only one ethical scenario did the residents perform all the critical actions. Residents

performed the fewest critical actions for a patient conﬁdentiality case. Whereas profes-

sional behaviors appeared to be learned through some facet of residency training—

senior residents had better overall performance than incoming interns—this study,

together with the Wong et al. study, highlight: (1) the need for more focused ethics

instruction; (2) the value of performance-based assessment for providing authen-

tic learning and testing experience; and (3) the importance of feedback that enables

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 515

professionals to compare their performance with peers and against a standard (the

criterion rating form).

Accreditation Guidelines for Professional Ethics Education

Accrediting bodies for the ﬁve professions we reviewed have required institutions to

include education in ethics and professionalism for at least the last two accrediting cycles.

For undergraduate medical schools, the accreditation standard states

A medical education program must include instruction in medical ethics and human

values and require its medical students to exhibit scrupulous ethical principles in

caring for patients and in relating to patients’ families and to others involved in

patient care.

(LCME, 2012)

What hasn’t been required is that institutions speciﬁcally demonstrate the effectiveness

of ethics and professionalism education—though some outcome-minded institutions

have included such data at part of their accreditation self studies.

Responding to the accountability movement in the US, two accrediting bodies

are requiring that institutions engage in the speciﬁcation and assessment of compe-

tencies. Both the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME,

2013) and the Commission on Dental Accreditation (ADA, 2013) are phasing in new

accreditation systems requiring schools to report attainment of educational out-

comes. In medicine, seven of 26 specialties (emergency medicine, internal medicine,

neurologic surgery, orthopedic surgery, pediatrics, diagnostic radiology, and urology)

have articulated levels of resident physician competencies based on expert panels and

existing literature (Nasca, Philibert, Brigham, & Flynn, 2012). Schools will assess resi-

dents at six-month intervals. The levels, referred to as milestones, suggest their devel-

opmental nature. One of the subcompetencies of professionalism concerns the ethics

of patient care.

The challenge, of course, is to design systems to demonstrate achievement of such

competencies. The systematic use of behavior checklists completed by multiple raters—

the likely method of monitoring competence achievement—is certainly preferable to

simply claiming learning outcomes are achieved, or relying on the fact that few students

fail national and regional board exams. The concern, expressed by medical education

scholars, is that “competency is not enough” (e.g., Jarvis-Selinger et al., 2012). Jarvis-

Selinger and colleagues, together with Hafferty et al. (2011), recommend a focus on the

individual’s inner psychosocial capacities associated with identity formation coupled

with a focus on the professions’ contractual obligations to society (Cruess & Cruess,

2008a). Others, Ginsburg, Regehr and Lingard (2004) stress the underlying reasons and

justiﬁcation for the behaviors, and Dyche and Epstein (2011) stress cultivating an atti-

tude of curiosity. A balance must be sought between behavioral observations and the

assessment of capacities such as those suggested by Rest’s FCM.

Standards for law school accreditation state that the curriculum must include instruc-

tion in “substantive law” and “other professional skills” that are “generally regarded as

necessary to effective and responsible participation in the legal profession” (ABA, 2013).

Arguing that the standards generally refer only to the ﬂoor requirements needed to

prepare students in legal rules and procedures, and professional skills, Hamilton (2008)

516 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

offers a deﬁnition of professionalism that integrates legal knowledge and skill with a set

of aspirational values and ideals to guide a lawyer’s decisions and actions. Calling for

a systematic empirical approach like the FCM for developing curriculum, assessment,

and pedagogical methods to foster professionalism, Hamilton stresses professionalism’s

developmental nature which requires a lifelong commitment to learning and develop-

ment. Currently, he is engaged in research to deﬁne speciﬁc competencies expected of law

school graduates in the ﬁrst year of their employment (Hamilton, 2013a). Whereas the

American Bar Association Accreditation standards do not currently incorporate Hamil-

ton’s focus on outcome assessment, the ABA is expanding efforts to share knowledge of

this, and similar approaches (Hamilton, 2013b).

The National League for Nursing Accrediting Commission, Inc. (NLNAC, 2013)

Standards and Criteria state that programs being reviewed in January 2014 must have

clearly articulated student learning outcomes and program outcomes consistent with

contemporary practice. Student outcomes are deﬁned as “statements of expectation

written in measurable terms that express what a student will know, do, or think at the

end of learning.” Beyond requiring “clearly stated learning and program outcomes” the

document does not specify reporting of the assessment of outcomes.

Responding to animal welfare concerns (Tonsor & Wolf, 2011), the American Veteri-

nary Medical Association (AVMA, 2012a) Council on Education (COE) (AVMA, 2012b)

mandates that schools teach ethics within the curriculum. Recently mandated is a require-

ment that schools develop outcome assessment of holistic competencies necessary for

the professional practice. Unlike professions that specify particular ethics competencies,

veterinary medicine appears to consider ethics integral to each of its competencies. How

ethics outcomes will be assessed is unclear. However, the COE policy states that in order

to meet accreditation standards, veterinary schools must provide

opportunities throughout the curriculum for students to gain an understanding of

professional ethics, delivery of professional services to the public, personal and busi-

ness ﬁnance and management skills; and gain an understanding of the breadth of

veterinary medicine, career opportunities and other information about the profes-

sion.

Its stance towards animal welfare ethics is reﬂected in the directive that veterinary

schools provide students with the “knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, aptitudes and

behaviors necessary to address responsibly the health and well being of animals in the

context of ever-changing societal expectations.”

Current Practices

Current practices in ethics education are documented to varying degrees. Methods range

from surveys of school administrators or faculty to outcomes assessment with alumni.

MEDICINE

Medical education appears to distinguish ethics instruction (i.e., promoting reason-

ing) from promoting professionalism (i.e., behavior). In a survey of 126 US medical

schools (Swick, Szenas, Danoff, & Whitcomb, 1999), 89.7% of the 116 responding

schools offer formal instruction related to professionalism—teaching professionalism

as a single course or incorporating it as part of multiple courses. Diverse strategies

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 517

to promote professionalism include “white-coat ceremonies” and other orientation

experiences. Earlier reviews focused on ethics instruction (Eckles, Meslin, Gaffney, &

Helft, 2005; Lehmann, Kasoff, Koch, & Federman, 2004; Miles, Lane, Bickel, Walker,

& Cassel, 1989). DuBois and Burkemper (2002) conclude (1) ethics teaching occurs

during the ﬁrst two years in the preclinical setting, and just over half of the medical

schools teach ethics for one year; (2) no single source, reading, or code shapes the cur-

ricula; (3) 10 teaching objectives were identiﬁed, with the majority including these:

to become familiar with medical ethics topics, and to develop ethical reasoning; (4)

methods include discussion/debates, readings, writing exercises, and lectures; (5)

evaluation methods described did not dispel the notion that courses are not rigorous;

and (6) the most common method of grading is pass/fail and the most common cri-

terion for grading is class attendance and participation. In sum, schools rarely engaged

in formal assessment of the effectiveness of their courses—even when developing

ethical reasoning is the most commonly-stated purpose. Eckles and colleagues (2005)

concluded: It appears that the approach taken within a particular institution reﬂects

the educator’s preference or background, rather than a carefully crafted analysis of the

educational and developmental needs of the students.

Some 40 years after programs in medical ethics and humanities were established,

three medical ethics and humanities faculty (Doukas et al., 2010, 2012) conﬁrm Eckles’

observations, reporting the lack of a comprehensive critical appraisal of medical educa-

tion in ethics and humanities. Doukas and colleagues organized an expert panel as part

of The Project to Rebalance and Integrate Medical Education (PRIME), which convened

an expert panel to specify a need for clear direction and academic support that should

be based on clear objectives that can be reliably assessed. However, the panel did not get

beyond afﬁrming the importance of “two essential skill sets”: patient-centered skills, and

critical thinking skills. Their next publication promises to address learning objectives,

sound assessment, critical appraisal of residency learning, and reﬁnement of objectives

and measurement based upon critical appraisal.

Dentistry

Lantz, Bebeau, and Zarkowski (2011) surveyed the status of ethics teaching and learn-

ing in US dental schools. All 56 schools responded. Compared with previous surveys

conducted over the last 30 years, the researchers note little change in the mean number

of contact hours (26.5), which represents 0.5% of the mean clock hours of instruc-

tion for dental education programs. However, positive changes are evident—from

rules-based lectures merged with jurisprudence and practice management—typically

presented in the fourth year until at least the mid 1980s—to a gradual introduction

of case-based teaching as suggested by Bebeau (1985). Also inﬂuential in facilitating

change were results of a task force of ethicists, dental educators, and practitioners com-

missioned to develop guidelines for the teaching of ethics. Grounded in Rest’s FCM,

the resulting 1989 Curriculum Guidelines on Ethics and Professionalism in Dentistry

(Commission on Dental Education, 1989) speciﬁed goals for ethics education that

subsequently informed accreditation standards requiring ethics instruction in under-

graduate dental education. Today, all schools require ethics instruction, but after July

2013, the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA, 2013)—responding to the

accountability movement—will require that schools report attainment of educational

outcomes.

518 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

What has changed over time is what qualiﬁes as ethics instruction, the pedago-

gies used, and the development and availability of norm-referenced learning outcome

assessments used by a number of schools to demonstrate program effectiveness. More

impressive, however, is the percentage of schools that say they use reﬂective writing

and other assessment procedures that require students to demonstrate their ability to

apply ethical principles to complex cases. To support ethics instruction and outcome

assessment, the American Society for Dental Ethics, with support from the Amer-

ican College of Dentists, regularly sponsors Faculty Development Workshops at the

Annual Meeting of the American Dental Education Association. Outcome measures

and instructional materials developed for these workshops are available through

the Center for the Study of Ethical Development (www.ethicaldevelopment.ua.edu/

bebeau-materials). Thus, dentistry is well positioned to respond to CODA’s (2013)

requirements for outcome assessment.

Law

Contrasting legal education with medical education, Egan et al. (2004) noted that

legal ethics did not attempt to teach foundational frameworks for making moral judg-

ments, and did not concern itself with the development of altruism, integrity, or char-

acter. Courses focused on teaching legal rules to enable students to pass a professional

responsibility examination required for licensure in all states

(National Conference

of Bar Examiners [NCBE], 2013). Prior to the 2007 Carnegie report (Sullivan, Colby,

Wegner, Bond, & Shulman, 2007), efforts to inﬂuence moral judgment such as those

reported by Hartwell (1995), or to study the relation between moral judgment and

professional characteristics (Landsman & McNeel, 2004) were exceptions in legal

education.

Several initiatives have broadened the perspective of legal education scholars about

the primacy of moral reasoning development and professional identity formation.

Following the 2007 Carnegie report’s recommendations, Neil Hamilton of the Univer-

sity of St. Thomas (Minnesota) School of Law, advanced a deﬁnition of professional-

ism in law (Hamilton, 2008) that incorporated the FCM as its core, and organized a

national symposium on empirical professionalism in law inviting inﬂuential scholars

afﬁliated with the Carnegie report to present position papers subsequently published

in a special issue of the University of St. Thomas Law Journal (2008). The 2008 sym-

posium inspired a subsequent series of a local and national symposia, that connected

inﬂuential legal scholars with scholars outside the legal profession (e.g., Shulman,

Colby, Sullivan, Bebeau) to address research and pedagogy regarding professionalism.

These efforts inspired law schools to collaborate on curricular changes and pedagogic

innovations to foster identity development (e.g., Educating Tomorrow’s Lawyers at the

University of Denver, a consortium of 28 law schools nationally, and the National

Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism at Georgia State, a consortium of seven

law schools). He also arranged funding for educational research, engaged the authors

in consultation (MJB and VEM) to plan and conduct research on identity forma-

tion of lawyers (Hamilton & Monson, 2012b), to engage educators in innovation in

law students’ moral reasoning development using team-based learning and academic

controversy (Johnson, Johnson, & Monson, 2013), and also to analyze longitudinal

and cross-sectional studies of law students’ moral reasoning development (Hamilton,

Monson, & Organ, 2013; Monson, Hamilton, & Organ, 2013).

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 519

Nursing

A recent critique of nursing education (Benner et al., 2009) argues for a radical trans-

formation of nursing education to better prepare nurses to function in a chaotic and

dysfunctional US health care system. Our review of the nursing education literature sug-

gests that the current status of nursing ethics education is consistent with Woods’ (2005)

review, noting that schools employ many of the possible philosophical and theoretical

approaches to teach ethics. Woods lists and references 14 philosophical approaches (e.g.,

traditional theoretical ethics, virtue ethics, values approaches, narrative ethics, casuistry,

an ethic of care approach, codes of ethics) and an array of teaching methods (e.g., lec-

tures, tutorials, debates, model emulation, cases studies, relational narratives, reﬂective

practice, clinical supervision, or combinations of these). Yet, based on their extensive

ﬁeld research, Benner and colleagues (2009) cited “a signiﬁcant difference between what

educators and students articulate as their understanding of ethical comportment and

the actual teaching of it.” Whereas educators and students “describe ‘ethics’ in terms of

learning the principles of bioethics, in everyday practice, [the focus] is with ethical com-

portment, on becoming good practitioners” (p. 11). Consistent with Shulman (2010),

Benner and colleagues recommend that programs focus on the formation of professional

identity rather than on socialization. However, the Benner critique does not suggest a

theoretical model to guide the focus on identity formation. We found only a few studies

(e.g., Park, Kjervik, Crandell, & Oermann, 2012; Ryden, Duckett, Crisham, Caplan, &

Schmittz, 1989) that ground their educational programs in a theory of learning that is

linked to an assessment of competence.

Veterinary Medicine

An increasing focus on animal welfare ethics in veterinary education (Tonsor & Wolf,

2011) parallels changing consumer attitudes regarding farm animal production as well

as the laws and regulations deﬁning humane treatment of companion and sport animals.

In the past, ethics instruction typically focused on legal and practice management issues.

To meet emerging concerns for animal welfare, farm animal veterinarians must be able

to respond to advocacy groups who challenge animal production methods as well as

regulations within companion or sport animal industries. Similarly, both large and small

animal veterinarians must be able to competently assist law enforcement when called

upon to provide expert consulting on cases of possible abuse or neglect.

Although some model courses (e.g., Michigan State University’s long-standing

required two-credit animal welfare course [Abood & Siegford, 2010]); and the UK’s

animal welfare ethics curriculum developed for veterinary schools through a partnership

between the University of Bristol and the World Society for the Protection of Animals

(WSPA) (Main, 2010) have been developed, we did not ﬁnd current information on the

status of ethics teaching, and only an announcement in 2011 that an AVMA commit-

tee has been organized to develop a model curriculum in veterinary ethics and animal

welfare. Further, aside from Self ’s work on moral reasoning development of veterinar-

ians (see Bebeau, 2002 for a review), studies do not provide outcome data on the effec-

tiveness of instruction. Although Abood and Siegford (2012) provide student opinion

data on their introductory course, they do not include an analysis of the effectiveness of

student writing assignments, though a scoring rubric for analyzing student assignments

is presented.

520 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

Reﬂections on Current Practices

Our review of reports on the status of ethics education across professions suggests that

most articles in the literature are “much ado about what to do” with little evidence

as to what works. When evidence is presented (e.g., Abood & Siegford, 2012; Jensen,

2003), it is student course evaluation data indicating whether students “like” the

instructional strategies or “like” the professor. Like Jensen, in our experience, students

“like” instruction when it is highly engaging, uses real cases with outstanding speak-

ers/or commentators, but ﬁnd fault with the professor and the instructional strategies

when they are judged on the basis of the adequacy of their ethical arguments or on

the adequacy of action plans and dialogs they design to demonstrate ethical com-

petency (e.g., “respect for persons” or “informed consent”) in real or simulated situ-

ations. Relying on student course evaluations as an indicator of the success or value

of ethics instruction assumes that if students enjoy instruction, they will learn. This

assumption is not supported by empirical evidence (Clayson, Frost, & Sheffet, 2006).

For an extensive discussion of the relation between ratings and learning, see Bebeau

and Monson (2008).

CAPACITIES AS THE FOCUS OF ETHICS EDUCATION: A REVIEW OF THE

EVIDENCE

Ethical Sensitivity

Studies using well-validated measures of ethical sensitivity—as Rest deﬁned it—dem-

onstrate that sensitivity is a construct that is distinct from moral judgment (Bebeau,

2006). Similar to studies of moral reasoning (see next section), both professionals and

professional school students vary greatly in their ability to interpret the characteristics

of patients/clients and responsibilities of the professional embedded in tests of ethical

sensitivity. Further, some studies (Bebeau, 2006, 2009b) show that sensitivity can be

inﬂuenced by educational interventions, and in some settings (You, Maeda, & Bebeau,

2011) small but signiﬁcant gender differences, favoring women, are evident.

In a meta-analysis of ethical sensitivity research, You et al. (2011) identiﬁed 37 studies

in which 23 measures were described to assess ethical sensitivity in dentistry, medicine,

nursing, counseling, business, science, and school settings. After classifying the measures

along several dimensions, including the extent to which the construct was elicited by

the stimulus materials, they concluded that only seven of the measures met criteria, and

most have not been extensively validated. Examples of validated measures that elicit the

process include the Dental Ethical Sensitivity Test (DEST; Bebeau & Rest, 1982; Bebeau,

Rest, & Yamoor, 1985) designed for dentistry and the Racial Ethical Sensitivity Test

(REST; Brabeck & Sirin, 2001; Sirin, Brabeck, Satiani, & Rogers-Serin, 2003) designed

for counseling psychology.

What distinguished measures like the REST and DEST is the extent to which the

stimulus presents clues to a moral problem without ever signaling what moral issue is

at stake or what professional responsibility is called for. In contrast, some test design-

ers seemed to conceptualize “ethical sensitivity” as the ability to name the moral issue

when a condensed synopsis of a moral problem is presented. For example, in a case

like Heinz and the Drug dilemma, one could argue that naming the moral conﬂict as

a tension between the rights of the druggist to his property and the rights of Heinz’s

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 521

wife to her life is a matter of moral awareness or ethical sensitivity. In fact, Hebert,

Meslin, and Dunn (1992) designed such a measure for assessing ethical sensitivity in

medical education and observed wide variation in students’ abilities, ﬁnding it a useful

assessment tool.

Such ﬁndings no doubt are of interest. However, when ethical sensitivity is simply

deﬁned as the ability to name the moral issue (e.g., patient autonomy, informed consent,

distributive justice, or practitioner autonomy), important dimensions of ethical sensit-

ivity may be overlooked. In fact, Rest (1983) thought that naming the moral issue was

part of the reasoning and judgment process, and that the ability to diagnose what was

happening from ambiguous clues and putting these together with sometimes vaguely

understood professional and societal expectations was an unmeasured capacity that pro-

vided insight into moral failings (Bebeau, 2009b).

Moral Reasoning and Judgment

Several approaches are used to assess moral reasoning and judgment, and each has its

place in the design of ethics education. Following is a brief overview of the various tech-

niques, their usefulness and appropriateness for assessing student learning, providing

feedback, and assessing curricular effectiveness.

Classroom Assessment

In ethics and philosophy courses, the essay is the preferred method for assessing

and providing feedback to students on their developing reasoning ability. Whereas

it is possible to achieve agreement on criteria and standards for assessment of essays

(e.g., Bebeau, Pimple, Muskavitch, Borden, & Smith, 1995), most ethics educators in

professions ﬁnd such assessments time-consuming or ﬁnd themselves insufﬁciently

equipped to develop criteria and standards to achieve sufﬁcient interjudge agreement

to use essays to assess learning outcomes across educational and institutional settings.

What experience and evidence show (Bebeau, 1994, 2006) is that students in profes-

sional education are intellectually mature and though they may come to professional

education with low P scores on measures such as the DIT, they often learn quickly

to construct well-reasoned arguments and to apply criteria for judging the adequacy

of an argument. For sample cases and criteria for judgment, see www.ethicaldevelop-

ment.ua.edu/bebeau-materials/.

Standardized Measures of Life-Span Development

Standardized tests like the DIT (Rest, 1979; Thoma, 2006) are frequently used to test

the effects of professional education on moral judgment development. The interest

is in establishing whether professional education adds value beyond the well-estab-

lished ﬁnding—that moral judgment shows dramatic growth during college unless

programs are narrowly focused on the technical aspects of career development or

are dogmatic in their approach (McNeel, 1994; Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Find-

ings from studies of moral judgment development in the professions typically do

not show change in moral judgment development in the absence of a well-validated

ethics intervention. For an extensive summary of studies describing education effects,

intervention effects, subgroup differences, regression effects,

and climate effects

across professions, see Bebeau (2002) and Bebeau and Monson (2008) for an update

of ﬁndings.

522 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

Profession-Speciﬁc Measures of Reasoning and Judgment

The question for educators in areas like “integrity in scientiﬁc research,” is whether to

teach to the codes and policy manuals or to teach concepts particular to the discip-

line: intellectual honesty, humane care of animals, intellectual property, collegiality in

scientiﬁc investigations, and so on (IOM, 2002a, pp. 36–40). Following Strike’s (1982)

suggestion that measures of life-span development may not be sensitive to learning

of profession-speciﬁc concepts taught in an ethics curriculum, Bebeau and Thoma

(1999) devised the Dental Ethical Reasoning and Judgment Test (DERJT) as a proto-

type measure of intermediate concepts. Such concepts are thought to reside between the

more prescriptive directives of codes of professional conduct and the more abstract prin-

ciples (e.g., autonomy, beneﬁcence, and justice) described by ethicists (e.g., Beauchamp

& Childress, 1994). The DERJT is sensitive to dental ethics education interventions, is

a useful measure for diagnosing deﬁciencies in reasoning and judgment as displayed by

dentists disciplined by a licensing board (Bebeau, 2009b), and is moderately correlated

with DIT scores (Thoma et al., 2008).

In the past, ethics educators were typically limited to measures of life-span devel-

opment (e.g., the DIT or the MJI) to demonstrate the effects of ethics education. Two

recent studies support the added beneﬁt of an intermediate concept measure (ICM) as

an outcome measure for ethics education programs. Initially, the ICM was thought to be

most applicable to professions education, where the acquisition of particular and often

unique concepts is required. In concert with this expectation, Turner (2008) designed

and validated an Army Leader Ethical Reasoning Test (ALERT) that provides informa-

tion on ethical competence over and above what is provided by DIT scores. Whereas

Thoma, Derryberry, and Crowson (2013) demonstrated that an ICM designed for ado-

lescents can capture the transition from personal interest to conventional reasoning,

Bebeau (2009b) demonstrated the dental ICM was particularly useful in helping dis-

ciplined dentists see how often they were unable to distinguish bad choices from better

choices.

MORAL MOTIVATION AND IDENTITY FORMATION

Development of a professional identity is an important outcome of the professional

education and socialization process. One approach is to use essays or interviews to elicit

a sense of professional identity as it unfolds during the course of professional educa-

tion. A second is to design sets of items to measure a professional’s role concept (Bebeau

et al., 1993).

Professional Identity Formation

Kegan (1982) proposed that one’s identity is ﬁrst embedded with close others (i.e.,

family, friends, and co-workers), and through life experiences (including educa-

tion) can become more inclusive, with an increasing sense of self-authorship (Baxter

Magolda & King, 2004) and moral responsibility to society. The developmental chal-

lenge of forging one’s identity involves becoming authentic and shedding others’ deﬁ-

nitions of us that are self-limiting or leave us vulnerable to succumbing to pressures of

self-interest or loss of autonomy. Forging a professional identity requires integration

and meshing of professional values and expectations with personal ones. Validation

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 523

studies of Kegan’s model (Forsythe, Snook, Lewis, & Bartone, 2002) conducted within

the military profession support the constructivist’s view that individuals move from

self-centered conceptions of identity through a number of transitions, to a moral iden-

tity characterized by the expectations of a profession—to put the interests of others

before the self, or to subvert one’s own ambitions to the service of society or to the

nation. The fully integrated moral self (i.e., personal and professional values are fully

integrated and consistently applied) tends not to develop until midlife—if it develops

at all (Forsythe et al., 2002).

Explorations into the development of a professional moral identity (recently sum-

marized by Bebeau & Monson, 2012; Hamilton & Monson, 2012a) ask students to

compose essays on questions derived from Kegan’s interviews. Essays reﬂect a wide

range of commitment to and understanding of professional values and expectations,

the extent to which societal obligation to underserved populations is expressed, and

whether such expectations are a core part of the entering student’s personal value

system. As with Forsythe and colleagues’ studies of entering professionals, the pre-

dominate mode of identity was a Stage 2/3 transition, meaning a focus on self-interest

with professional expectations seen as external to the self, rather than a constituent of

the moral self. Monson and Bebeau (2006) found that dental students at higher stages

(about 37% of entering students) were more likely to incorporate issues of access to

care, serving medical assistance patients, and volunteering to help those in need, as

key expectations of the self.

Role Concept

The Professional Role Orientation Inventory (PROI; Bebeau et al., 1993) is designed to

elicit a professional’s conception of their professional role. Four 10-item scales assess

dimensions of professionalism that are described in models of professionalism cited in

the professional ethics literature. The PROI scales have been shown to consistently dif-

ferentiate beginning and advanced student groups and practitioner groups expected to

differ in role concept. The measure is sensitive to the effects of instruction and has per-

formed well in construct validation studies. See Thoma and Bebeau (2013) for a recent

summary of validation studies. Further, the measure has been adapted for other settings

(e.g., physical therapy by Swisher, Beckstead, & Bebeau, 2004 and to Korean dentists by

Choi & Kim, 2007).

Several studies conﬁrm the need for professional socialization. Anderson (2001) con-

cluded that graduate students do not intuit the values of the research discipline either

from the curriculum or from their research mentors. Similarly, entering dental stu-

dents (Bebeau, 1994) couldn’t articulate professional expectation, sometimes even after

explicit instruction. Further, whereas medical students (Feudtner, Christakis, & Chris-

takis, 1994; Rennie & Crosby, 2002) believe they should report professional misconduct,

most are unwilling or uncomfortable doing so. Both researchers cite situational factors

that seem to work against professional self-regulation and point to the need for explicit

professional socialization together with appropriate practice in confronting real or per-

ceived misconduct. Based on the recent Carnegie reports, noting a deﬁciency in this

area of professional socialization, and a recent report by Jarvis-Selinger and colleagues

(2012), suggesting this is an area requiring attention, perhaps medical education will

catch up with other professions (e.g., dentistry and the military) which are addressing

this important aspect of professional development.

524 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

Character and Competence: Implementation of the Decision

The importance of practitioner attributes and practical skills is particularly evident when

comparing physicians who have been sued for malpractice versus those who have not.

Studies indicate that even a small increase in the amount of time spent in patient com-

munication can reduce the likelihood of malpractice complaints (Ambady & Rosenthal,

1992; Levinson, 1994). As with the other capacities, both students and professionals vary

considerably in the courage and capacity to address the tough problems they will likely

encounter in practice. But sometimes what appears to be lack of courage is actually a

manifestation of practical wisdom (Schwartz & Sharpe, 2005). Wading into a problem

when you lack practical know-how may create a bigger mess than the failure to act.

Assessing fourth component capacities is commonly done through performance

assessments or case simulations, and is routinely part of admissions processes where

the individual’s undergraduate co-curricular activities are used as a proxy for character.

In medical education, Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) present the

medical student with a “standardized patient” with whom they interact. Feedback on

their effectiveness is provided.

In dental ethics education (Bebeau, 1994), students are presented with realistic

case scenarios with patients that examine a number of challenging ethical dilemmas.

Taking the role of a professional, students analyze their responsibilities in complex

clinical situations and develop action plans and dialogs that are critiqued for their

potential effectiveness. This practice builds conﬁdence and provides a template for

situations in practice that the student will encounter. A recent analysis of the ability

of 120 dental graduates to implement effective actions (You & Bebeau, 2012) indi-

cated that women graduates developed substantially more effective dialogs and action

plans than their male colleagues (effect size of 0.51). Consistent with the hypothesis

that moral motivation would inﬂuence ethical implementation, the researchers noted

that whereas male and female students had similar scores on the responsibility dimen-

sion of a measure of moral motivation (PROI scores) at entry to professional school,

and both demonstrated growth in their commitment to professional responsibilities,

women demonstrated signiﬁcantly greater change, an effect size of 0.75 for women

versus 0.5 for men.

APPYING THE FOUR COMPONENT MODEL TO REMEDIATE LAPSES IN

PROFESSIONALISM

Whether habits/behaviors apparent during professional school are (1) reﬂective of char-

acter traits that are resistant to change, (2) are indicative of an underdeveloped profes-

sional identity, or (3) are associated with underdeveloped capacities in ethical sensitivity,

reasoning, or implementation of defensible moral actions are questions of consider-

able interest to professions education. A retrospective analysis of performance data for

41 dentists referred for ethics instruction by a state dental board provides insight into

actions judged by others to be unprofessional (Bebeau, 2009a, 2009b).

Of the 41 dentists referred for ethics assessment, two were exempt from instruction

based on pretest performance on ﬁve well-validated measures of the FCM, and 38 com-

pleted an individualized course designed to remediate deﬁciencies in ethical abilities

identiﬁed at the pretest. Statistically signiﬁcant change (effect sizes ranging from 0.55 to

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 525

5.0) was observed for ethical sensitivity (DEST scores), moral reasoning (DIT scores),

and role concept (essays and PROI scores). Analysis of the relations between ability deﬁ-

ciencies and disciplinary actions supports the explanatory power of Rest’s FCM. Of par-

ticular interest is the way the model helped professionals deconstruct the usual summary

judgments about character (unethical or unprofessional are some of the milder descrip-

tors often used) and see themselves as lacking capacities that could be further developed.

For example, in cases where disciplinary action was taken for insurance or Medicaid

fraud, analysis of role concept and moral reasoning helped reinterpret what appeared to

be acts to promote self-interest as an unbounded sense of responsibility toward others.

The performance-based assessments (especially the DEST) were useful in identifying

shortcomings in either ethical sensitivity or ethical implementation that accounted for

the moral failing. Rather than trying to line his or her pocket—the usual attribution of

such acts—the individual paternalistically manipulated the system in order to help the

patient achieve much needed care.

In eight cases where disciplinary action was taken for providing specialty care below

the standard of a specialist,

each dentist had acceptable ethical sensitivity scores, but

seven of the eight had moral reasoning scores below the mean for dental graduates, and

ﬁve of the eight had very low reasoning scores (DIT P scores in the low 30s). This ﬁnding

is reminiscent of Baldwin and Self ’s (2006) observation showing a relation between low

DIT scores and frequency of malpractice claims. Of all the examples of shortcomings

in capacities observed, the most compelling was the inability of 39 of the 41 referrals

to articulate key professional expectations (e.g., the responsibility for lifelong learning,

for self-monitoring, and regulation of the profession), expectations that come tripping

off the tongues of the 10 moral exemplars studied by Rule and Bebeau (2005). This

ﬁnding argues for the importance of an explicit focus on professional identity forma-

tion—something the disciplined dentists said they had not received and something

they said they highly valued about the remedial ethics program. In fact, three insights

about the design of ethics curricula emerged from a qualitative analysis of the referrals’

self-assessments of learning. First, beginning the instructional process with a discus-

sion of the distinguishing features of a profession and the expectations that follow is

uplifting and renewing. Second, practitioners highly valued the insight gained from

the diagnostic assessment of their strengths and weaknesses across the four capacities

that give rise to decision making. Third, practitioners highly valued the emphasis the

course put on ethical implementation. Instead of stopping with “What is happening?”

and “What ought to be done?” as is typical of much ethics instruction, the courses spent

time focusing on how to implement an action plan, including what to say and how to

say it.

Building an Environment to Support Ethical Development and Professionalism

Two general conclusions guide our recommendations. First, there is ample evidence that

our capacities to recognize, reason about, commit to, and implement actions judged by

others to be moral, continue to develop across the life span. Second, there is also ample

evidence that professional growth and personal development is best accomplished in a

cooperative and collegial learning environment—one that uses multiple educational para-

digms and multiple methods of assessment. Given such evidence, professional schools

must reﬂect carefully on their responsibility for promoting developmental growth and

should be held accountable by accrediting bodies for the evidence of their program’s

526 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

educational effectiveness. Following are general recommendations for enhancing ethics

education.

First, ground the goals and purposes of ethics education in the FCM and begin the

socialization process by focusing on the identity of the individual and its congruence

with both societal and professional expectations. Ethics education often begins with a

focus on moral quandaries, sometimes preceded by a brief review of moral theories.

Such an approach is sure to engage students—maybe not the theory part—but it also can

do them a disservice. Asked to take a position on an ethical dilemma when the student

has had little opportunity to become acquainted with professional and societal expec-

tations may encourage a defensive stance on personal moral values, rather than open

reﬂection upon what it means to become a professional and, in effect, exploring whether

the profession’s value system and one’s own are congruent. No one has to become a

dentist or physician or lawyer, but if one decides to do so, doesn’t the profession have a

right to expect that when the individual takes the oath of ofﬁce that he or she not only

means it, but knows what it means? Students rarely come to professional school with

a clear vision of societal and professional expectations,

and do not intuit them from

the general educational process. Professional education must be conveyed as an oppor-

tunity to reﬂect on this important commitment. It should not be assumed that if one is

in professional school that one has resolved personal and professional expectations and

integrated these into one’s identity as a dentist, lawyer, or physician. In fact, our research

(Bebeau & Monson, 2012) illustrates the developmental nature of professional identity

formation, and our experience (Bebeau & Faber-Langendoen, 2014) with students who

have violated professional norms indicates how challenging it can be to address unpro-

fessional behavior in practice.

Second, design ethics curricula appropriate to the students’ level of professional

development. Genetic engineering and cloning may be intriguing value problems

for medical ethicists, but seldom are such problems of central concern to the novice.

Rather, students worry about problems that are more mundane (e.g., performing a

physical examination on a very ill patent, speaking up when noticing a questionable

practice performed by a superior, managing conﬂicting directives given by a resident

and an attending physician, responding to an angry patient, deciding whether the

physician has the right to assert his or her values with respect to ﬁlling prescriptions

for “the morning after pill”). As we have argued, students need not only decide on an

ethically defensible response, but need to work out how to effectively implement their

good intentions.

Third, professional education is expected to deﬁne professional expectations and

develop reﬂective self-directed learners (Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2005). Profes-

sional schools need to collaborate in order to design or utilize measures of ethical sensit-

ivity, moral reasoning, and role concept, to provide students with insight about their

own personal and professional development, thus enabling them to become reﬂective

and self-directed. Tests of life-span development (e.g., DIT) can be used to provide stu-

dents with personal insight as to how their skills at reasoning and judgment compare

with those of their peers and with expert judgment. Likewise, profession-speciﬁc meas-

ures like the DERJT or the PROI can be used to counsel students about the development

of their abilities so each can engage in more reﬂective practice. A part of reﬂective prac-

tice is to set personal learning goals.

Designing Professional Ethics Education s 527

Fourth, behavioral indicators of professionalism have been deﬁned and validated

(Papadakis et al., 2001; Platfoot Lacey, 2012). These may include such things as meeting

commitments, treating others (including faculty) respectfully, or self-monitoring the

use of mood-altering drugs. By deﬁning professional expectations, we include bottom-

up processes of empowering students to articulate their understanding of professional

expectations. By this, we mean that program evaluation and student development efforts

designed to glean the opinions of students and empower them are successful to the extent

the students who are given leadership and power have the vision and values to advance

professional expectations. Coaching student leaders to raise the bar for their peers on

community service may be necessary, as opposed to allowing a laissez-faire approach to

shape student culture and values.

Fifth, the institution must attend to the moral milieu. Because students learn from

observing peers and faculty, requiring the assessment of professional behaviors within

an environment where those behaviors are not the norms would present a consider-

able challenge and risk being perceived as organizational hypocrisy. There must be a

whole school commitment that includes modeling the professional behavior we wish to

promote. Modeling will also extend, from time to time, to confronting issues of intol-

erance, arrogance, entitlement, or paternalism. When brought to professional settings,

such behaviors can be devastating—to clients, patients, and to careers. This dimension

of personal development cannot be relegated to a single ethics course, but rather must

be woven into the fabric of school culture. The ultimate respect we can accord students

is to act as swiftly in confronting these issues as would a human resources ofﬁcer with an

employee.

Last, a professional ethics curriculum needs to promote a sense of the profession’s

collective responsibility for the welfare of society. Only when professionals exercise their

collective responsibility to promote the public good will the trust society has carefully

given be maintained. The role of the educator is to raise such consciousness.

NOTES

1. Ethical sensitivity embraces what is currently referred to as “cultural competency”—i.e., the knowledge and

understanding of difference that enables a provider to deliver services that are respectful of and responsive

to the health beliefs, practices, and cultural and linguistic needs of a particular patient.

2. Our approach is consistent with Cruess and Cruess (2008b) who recommend the integration of sociological

and virtue-based approaches to deﬁning professional expectations. A virtue-based approach is certainly

acceptable, but unless the approach also reﬂects what medical sociologists have observed, the profession

runs the risk of failing to meet legitimate societal expectations.

3. Five milestones of ethical competence are:

1. Is aware of basic bioethical principles and is able to identify ethical issues in clinical situation.

2. Consistently recognizes ethical issues in practice and is able to discuss, analyze, and manage such

issues in common and frequent clinical situations.

3. Is able to effectively analyze and manage ethical issues in complicated and challenging clinical

situations.

4. Consistently considers and manages ethical issues in practice and develops and applies a systematic

and appropriate approach to analyzing and managing ethical issues when providing medical care.

5. Demonstrates leadership and mentorship on understanding and applying bioethical principles

clinically, particularly responsiveness to patients above self-interest and self-monitoring, and

develops institutional and organizational strategies to protect and maintain these principles.

4. The Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) is a standardized exam of the National

Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) and is required for admission to the bar in all but three US

528 s M.J. Bebeau and V.E. Monson

jurisdictions. The MPRE assesses mastery of the rules, principles, and codes contained within the American

Bar Association’s (ABA) Model Rules of Professional Conduct (MRPC) and Model Codes of Judicial

Conduct (MCJC).

5. Dental students in the Minnesota curriculum demonstrate signiﬁcant growth in the ability to develop a

well-reasoned moral argument following 10 hours of small group dilemma discussions. In addition to the

discussions, students receive written feedback during the course on ﬁve written essays.

6. Whereas it is hard to imagine actual erosion in the ability to reason in the sense that individuals who are

able to comprehend more advanced moral arguments and therefore prefer them (which is what selection of

postconventional moral arguments on the DIT amounts to), suddenly lose the ability to comprehend such

arguments. However, when students encounter the complexities of professional practice, some become disil-

lusioned and cynical about the possibility of applying such ideals in real-life situations. Selecting more self-

interest or maintaining norms arguments at post-test may simply reﬂect students’ concerns about the

practice environment.

7. Cases include how to manage a case of suspected child abuse, substandard work by a previous dentist, drug-

seeking behavior of a patient, and patient requests for treatment that does not align with the dentist’s values

or judgment.

8. The Dental Practice Act does not prohibit the generalist from providing specialty care (e.g., endodontic or

orthodontic care), but does hold the generalist to the standards of the specialist.

9. See Bebeau and Monson (2012) for an extensive discussion and list of citations.

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535

Abood, S. K. 519

Adler, A. 279

Adolphs, R. 281

Ahlberg, M. 475, 483

Aho, L. 479

Ajzen, I. 424

Aknin, L. B. 230

Allen, J. P. 459

Alt, M. N. 458

Althof, W. 61, 101, 199, 207–8, 215, 256

Anderson, M. 523

Appiah, K. 25

Aquinas, T. 27, 45

Aquino, K. 87, 90

Aragaki, C. 315

Araki, N. 308, 309, 310, 314, 316, 320

Araujo, U. 192–3

Arendt, H. 443, 444, 448, 453

Aristotle 2, 14–18, 58n2, 142, 272, 274, 347, 354, 358

collaborative thinking 23

moral character 44, 84, 498

practical wisdom 15–18, 24

reason 14, 15

self-authorship 152

virtue theory 14–18, 25, 44, 85, 102, 493, 494

Arnold, M. L. 80

Arnold, T. 47

Arsenio, W. 123, 128, 230

Arthur, J. 47, 57

Atkins, R. 74, 89

Aufenanger, S. 217

Balaguer, I. 497, 498, 499

Baldwin, D. C. 514, 525

Bandura, A. 20, 147, 213, 279, 302, 391, 425, 428, 509–10

Bar-On, R. 275, 276

Barclay, J. 46

Bargh, J. A. 88, 141, 144

Barnard, H. C. 46

Barriga, A. Q. 91

Barton, K. C. 359

Batchelder, T. H. 457

Batson, C. D. 231, 233

Battistich, V. 263, 265

Beauchamp, T. L. 512

Bebeau, M. 68, 430–1, 509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 517,

520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526

Becker, M. H. 424

Beckner, W. 102, 106

Benn, R. 234, 235

Benner, P. 519

Bennett, W. 15, 55, 187, 493

Benninga, J. S. 258

Benson, P. L. 429, 430

Bentham, J. 46

Bergem, T. 101

Berger, R. 302, 303–4

Bergman, R. 85

Berkowitz, L. 477

Berkowitz, M. 54, 61, 76, 106, 109, 113, 165, 249, 250, 251,

252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 290, 303, 493–4

Berman, S. 274, 408

Beyer, L.E. 110, 111, 113

Bier, M. C. 54, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 290, 303

Billig, S. H. 459, 460

Bissinger, B. 496

Bitz, B. 130

Blair, R. 123

Blasi, A. 68, 85–7, 88, 92, 141, 144, 299, 500, 508

Blatt, M. 75, 76, 141, 165, 318–19

Bock, T. 152

Bohlin, K. E. 53, 106, 109, 110

Bok, D. 511

Bouffard, S. 268

Boyte, H. 442

Brabeck, M. M. 68

NAME INDEX

536 s Name Index

Brand, C. 294

Brandt, R. 25

Bredemeier, B. 489, 491, 492, 497–8, 499

Brendtro, L. 286

Brennan, W. J. 356

Bricker, D. C. 107

Bridges, D. 361

Brighouse, H. 357

Bronfenbrenner, U. 392

Brooks, D. 52

Brown, D. 161

Brugman, D. 94

Bryk, A. 84, 255, 295

Burkemper, J. 517

Burnyeat, M. 17

Buzzelli, C. A. 108

Caceda, R. 65

Callan, E. 356, 357

Campbell, E. 101, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114

Cantor, L. 159

Cantor, N. 92

Carlo, G. 85

Carr, D. 50, 54, 85, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106

Catalano, R. F. 150, 424, 426, 428, 431

Celio, C. I. 458, 460, 461

Chartrand, T. L. 141

Chen-Gaddini, M. 411, 412

Childress, J. F. 512

Cicero 347

Clark, C. M. 102

Clark, R. D. 123

Clarke, P. 483

Clarke-Stewart, A. 69

Clopton, N. A. 68

Coakley, J. J. 491

Coatsworth, J. D. 234

Colby, A. 65, 74–5, 87, 94, 294, 372, 375, 376, 379, 381,

382, 383

Colnerud, G. 103, 105, 106, 107, 108

Comer, J. 284

Condon, P. 233

Conrad, D. 459

Conway, J. M. 458, 461, 463

Cremin, H. 395

Crick, B. 354

Crouch, C. 387

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 294–5, 301–2

Dalai Lama 224, 230, 242

Daloz, L. A. 442, 443, 448–9, 453

Dalton, J. H. 274

Damasio, A. 149, 281

Damon, W. 74–5, 87, 94, 124, 125, 186, 187, 213, 294, 299,

376

Darling-Hammond, L. 210

Darwin, C. 146, 152, 274

Davidson, M. 274, 283, 291, 292, 300, 301, 492, 497, 499

Davidson, P. 125, 371

Dawson, T. L. 65

DeHaan, R. 76

Descartes, R. 19

Detert, J. R. 91

DeVries, R. 56, 161, 164, 165, 166, 169, 173, 180, 181, 185,

188, 189–90, 191–2, 193, 194, 195

Dewey, J. 77, 84, 149, 159, 164, 185, 223, 257, 265, 269,

273, 274, 275, 284, 285, 309, 355, 359, 389, 391, 392,

406, 410, 448

and civic education 358

and constructivist education 180, 181, 183–4

on democracy 444

and just community approach 205

on the moral self 376

and progressive education 24, 77, 451

and service learning 457

Donahue, D. M. 113

Doris, J. M. 96

Doukas, D. J. 517

Draper, N. 293

Dreeben, R. 27n1

Dreikurs, R. 160, 173

DuBois, J. M. 517

Duckworth, A. 270, 285, 295

Duckworth, E. 270

Duda, J. L. 302, 497, 498, 499

Duncan, L. G. 234

Durkheim, E. 2, 3, 64, 71, 73, 182–3, 188, 201, 205, 387

and character education 61, 121

cultural socialization approach 62–3

Durlak, J. A. 134, 224, 251, 252, 255, 256, 257, 258, 265,

277, 279

Dyche, L. 515

Eccles, J. 84, 128, 130, 446, 462

Ecken, L. 161, 165, 167, 169, 174

Eckles, R. E. 517

Edelstein, W. 393, 394

Edwards, M. 27

Efron, S. 111, 112, 113

Egan, E. A. 512, 518

Eggum, D. 231

Eisenberg, N. 125, 126, 187, 231, 457

Elias, M. J. 275, 277, 278, 286, 299

Emde, R. 123

Endicott, L. 152

Enright, R. D. 76

Epstein, R. M. 515

Ericsson, K. A. 295

Erikson, E. 49, 168, 457

Faber-Langendoen, K. 514, 526

Fegley, S. 87, 376, 466

Feng, Y. 31

Fenstermacher, G. D. 102, 105, 106, 109

Ferlazzo, L. 269

Fishbein, M. 424

Flanagan, C. 84, 95, 214, 350–1

Flanagan, O. 96

Name Index s 537

Flook, L. 236

Fordyce, D. 46

Forgas, J. P. 281

Franco, C. 234–5

Frank, S. 392

Frankena, W. 13, 96

Frankfurt, H. 87

Freeman, N. K. 106

Freinert, C. 393

Freud, S. 24

Frimer, J. A. 91, 510

Fujita, M. 309

Furco, A. 458, 462, 464

Gallimore, R. 165, 230

Galston, W. 348

Gandhi, M. 227

Garbarino, J. 300–1

Gardner, H. 274

Garmon, L. C. 68

Garrod, A. 68

Garz, D. 217

Gaventa, J. 27

Gavin, L. 431

Geiger, K. 129, 130

Gerbner, G. 153

Gibbs, J. C. 69

Gilligan, C. 68, 163

Ginsburg, S. 515

Gisondi, M. A. 514

Glasser, W. 160

Gleason, T. 146

Goble, F. 52

Goldman, B. 494

Goleman, D. 274, 275, 276, 280–1, 299, 425

Goodlad, J. 84, 101, 105

Goodman, J. F. 84, 106, 107, 194

Gootman, J. A. 84

Gordon, T. 160

Götz, T. 214

Grant, G. 56

Grant, R. W. 108, 109

Green, T. F. 296, 302

Greenberg, M. T. 237

Gregory, A. 256

Grossman, J. M. 457

Gruendel, J. 95

Grych, J. 255, 257

Gutmann, A. 355, 356

Habermas, J. 391

Hafferty, F. W. 513, 515

Haidt, J. 227

Hall, P. S. and Hall, N. D. 172, 173

Halstead, M. 51–2

Hamilton, A. 354

Hamilton, N. 516, 518, 523

Hansen, D. 101, 103, 106, 107, 114

Hara, K. 315

Hardy, S. A. 85, 91

Harris, A. R. 237

Hart, D. 65, 74, 87, 88–90, 94–5, 376, 462, 463, 465, 466,

468

Harter, S. 85

Hartmann, N. 204

Hartshorne, H. 49

Hatano, G. 448

Hattie, J. 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258

Havel, V. 378

Havighurst, R. J. 49, 162, 165

Hawkins, D. J. 94

Hawkins, J. D. 424, 426, 428

Hawkins, M. T. 429, 430

Haynes, F. 102

Hebert, P. C. 521

Hedin, D. 459–60

Hegel, G. W. F. 24

Heinzer, S. 213

Helwig, C. C. 409, 410, 412–13, 414

Higgins, A. 71, 75, 77

Higgins-D’Alessandro, A. 79, 94, 149, 198, 203, 214, 219,

500

Higgins, C. 103, 106

Hildebrandt, C. 180, 190, 195

Hill, P. L. 91

Hilliard, F. H. 48

Hobbes, T. 19

Hoffman, M. L. 18, 162, 170, 175, 414

Hollos, M. 126

Hooker, R. 296

Horita, Y. 317

Howard-Hamilton, M. F. 79

Howard, R. W. 52

Howes, C. 255, 256

Huang, J. Y. 144

Huckle, J. 473

Huddleston, T. 392

Huitt, W. 283

Huizinga, J. 489

Hume, D. 19–20, 21, 46

Hunter, J. D. 152

Hutcheson, F. 46

Hutchison, H. 46

Hutto, D. D. 153

Hyde, J. S. 68

Jackson, P. W. 101

Jaffe, S. 68

James, R. 123

Janz, N. K. 424

Jarvis-Selinger, S. 515, 523

Jefferson, T. 347, 348, 349, 356, 363

Jennings, M. K. 352

Jennings, P. A. 235

Johnson, A. E. 236

Johnston, B. 108

Jonas, H. 479

Jones, E. N. 110

Jones, S. 268

538 s Name Index

Jorgensen, G. 68

Joseph, P. B. 111, 112, 113

Josephson, M. 493

Junn, J. 352

Junus, M. 398

Kahne, J. 360, 458, 465, 466, 468

Kaiser-Greenland, S. 236

Kals, E. 477, 479, 481

Kamii, C. 161, 166, 190

Kant, I. 14, 21–4, 69, 84, 211, 494

moral autonomy 21, 23

moral imperatives 21–2, 25, 26

moral maxims 22–3, 24

Keba, A. 96

Kegan, R. 509, 510, 514, 522, 523

Keljo, K. 65, 71

Kellert, S. R. 479

Kemeny, M. E. 235

Kenny, M. 457

Kerr, D. 163

Khalsa, S. B. 237

Killen, M. 123, 127, 128, 129, 186, 187

Kilpatrick, W. 51, 55

King, M. L. Jr. 304, 347–8, 358–9

Kirlin, M. K. 380

Kochanska, G. 93, 94

Kohlberg, L. 2–3, 4, 13, 18, 22, 23, 24, 27n4, 49, 61–83, 141,

161, 162, 165, 181, 203, 217, 283, 299, 300, 303, 399, 493

Just Community approach 4, 24, 61, 73, 77–9, 80,

131, 161, 164–5, 185, 198, 203, 204–6, 209, 214,

218, 219, 391

moral atmosphere 61, 71–3, 80 moral dilemma

discussions 24, 61, 65, 73, 75–7, 78, 80, 141, 185,

308, 318–19

moral exemplars 61, 73–5, 80

moral types 61, 69–71, 80

stage model of moral development 49, 50, 61, 63–9,

80, 122, 131, 184–5, 370, 371, 475, 478

and virtue theory 15

Kohn, A. 111, 140, 160, 161, 169, 171

Korte, M. 214

Korzcak, J. 201–3, 220

Krebs, D. 123

Krettenauer, T. 396

Kruger, A. 77

Kuh, G. 375, 380

Lagattuta, K. H. 124

Lahat, A. 123, 412

Langton, K. 352

Lantz, M. S. 517

Laozi 36

Lapsley, D. 48, 49, 55, 56, 69, 85, 87, 91–2, 94, 95, 109, 125,

140, 142, 150, 151, 162, 299, 302, 303, 430, 431, 493

Lasky, B. 92

Laupa, M. 186

Lawlor, M. S. 236

Leal Filho, W. 473, 475, 483

Leary, M. R. 85

Leithwood, K. 209

Leming, J. 50, 140, 290, 291, 430, 464

Leopold, A. 452

LePage, P. 106

Lerner, R. M. 226

Leslie, A. 123

Lesnick, H. 84, 106, 107, 194

Levine, P. 350–1

Levinson, M. 357

Levstik, L. S. 359

Lewin, K. 282

Li, Y. 40

Lickona, T. 50–1, 56, 75, 106, 109, 110, 134, 188, 252, 274,

283, 291, 292, 300, 301, 336, 492, 493–4, 497, 499

Lies, J. 152

Lind, G. 75

Lippmann, W. 356

Liu, C. 406, 407, 411

Locke, J. 19, 21, 46, 347

Lockwood, A. 53

Logan, R. 69

Lovat, T. 102, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258

Lover, A. 123, 128, 254

Luckowski, J. A. 103

Ludemann, P. 123

Lummis, C. D. 447

Luskin, F. M. 234

Luterbacher, M. 218

Lutterman, K. G. 477

Lutz, A. 233, 238

Ma, T. 39

McAdam, D. 377

McDonough, G. P. 71

Machiavelli, N. 347

MacIntyre, A. 14, 25

McKown, H. 51, 52

McLaughlin, T. 51–2

Maclean, A. M. 87

Maclean, P. D. 145

MacMillan, C. J. B. 105

Madison, J. 354

Makarenko, A. 200–1

Mann, H. 348

Mann, K. V. 511

Mao Zedong 402, 404

Markus, H. 377

Martin, G. B. 123

Marzano, R. J. 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257–8, 295, 299

Matsuba, K. 87

Matsuo, H. 315–16

May, M. 49

Mayer, J. D. 274–5, 276

Mayer, R. 161, 162

Meichenbaum, D. 280

Melchior, A. 458–9, 460, 461

Mencius 34, 35, 142, 227, 231

Mendelson, T. 236

Metz, E. 462–3, 465

Name Index s 539

Middaugh, E. 360

Milbrath, L. 215

Milgram, S. 70

Mischel, W. 18

Mitchell, K. 349–50

Mofﬁtt, T. E. 229

Monroe, L. 87

Monson, V. E. 509, 510, 513, 518, 521, 523

Montada, L. 477

Mosher, R. 79, 203

Moshman, D. 88

Nagel, T. 89

Napoli, M. 236

Narvaez, D. 53, 54–5, 56, 85, 87, 91–2, 94, 95, 109, 140,

141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 148, 150, 151, 152, 162, 187,

430, 431, 493

Nash, R. 51, 52, 111, 112, 114

Nelson, K. 95

Nicholls, J. G. 302

Niemi, R. G. 352

Nietzsche, F. 11, 24

Ning, W. 406, 407, 409, 411, 415

Noddings, N. 79, 106, 110, 111, 128, 163, 164, 165, 175,

256

Noggle, J. J. 237

Noguchi, H. 315, 316

Norton, D. L. 141

Nucci, L. 50, 52, 55, 79, 95, 96, 102, 106, 107, 123, 124, 125,

126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 134, 135, 165, 167, 169, 186,

195, 211, 220, 224, 229, 230, 273, 282, 409, 425, 443,

493

Nucci, M. S. 123, 129

Nünkler, H. 387

Nurius, P. 377

Nussbaum, M. 17, 18, 89

Oden, M. H. 301

Omoto, A. M. 466

Ong, A. 349

Osborne, K. 408

Oser, F. 75, 78, 79, 101, 131, 165, 204, 205–6, 211, 215

Osguthorpe, R. D. 102, 106

Ostrom, E. 441, 452

Overton, W. F. 225, 226

Pancer, S. M. 88

Papadakis, M. A. 513, 527

Parke, R. 69

Parks, S. D. 445

Pascarella, E. 372, 373, 375

Pavlov, I. 20

Peck, R. F. 49, 162, 165

Peck, S. 223

Pellegrino, E. 512

Perry, W. 373

Pestalozzi, H. 200

Peterson, C. 285, 299

Piaget, J. 2, 4, 18, 24, 49, 61, 65, 69, 122, 141, 166, 185, 187,

192, 399, 493

autonomy 180–1, 182

cognitive-developmental approach 62, 161

constructivist approach 180, 188

moral cognition 13, 14, 63

on playing games 489, 490

self-government of children 391, 393

socialization 163

theory of moral development 181–3

Intelligence and Affectivity 281

Moral Judgment of the Child 23, 62, 163

Piliavin, A. J. 466

Pitkanen-Pulkkinen, L. 162, 165, 168

Pitts, R. C. 92

Plato 43–4, 46, 152, 347, 349

Allegory of the Cave 12, 13

justice 13–14

theory of the forms 12–13

virtue 13–14

The Republic 13–14, 43–4, 46, 58n2, 349

Polson, D. 176

Power, F. C. 24, 48, 49, 71, 77, 79, 87, 88, 94, 149, 161, 164,

173, 185, 198, 203, 213–14, 219, 300, 301, 493, 500, 501

Powers, D. W. 135

Pratt, M. W. 87–8

Prehn, K. 65

Puka, B. 55

Puka, W. 68

Purple, D. 51, 52

Putnam, R. 350

Raajamkers, Q. A. W. 68

Raes, F. 237

Rahn, W. 379

Ravitch, D. 131, 263

Rawls, J. 2, 14, 24–5, 140, 389

Reed, A. II 90, 87

Reimer, J. 213–14

Reimer, K. 87

Reitz, D. J. 102

Renold, U. 78

Rest, J. R. 50, 75, 142, 513, 520, 521

Deﬁning Issues Test (DIT) 372, 478, 507, 509, 514,

521, 522

Four Component Model (FCM) of Morality 480,

507–10, 511, 515, 517, 518, 524–5, 526

Ritchie, S. 255, 256

Roberts, B. W. 91

Roeser, R. W. 223, 235

Rogers, J. 209

Roosevelt, T. 7

Root, S. 457, 458, 459, 460, 464

Rorty, A. O. 17, 96

Rosenstock, I.M. 424

Ross, W. D. 15

Rotblatt, S. 46

Rotter, J. B. 279

Rousseau, J.-J. 347

Rule, J. T. 525

540 s Name Index

Ruo, S. 38

Rusnak, T. 51

Russell, Y. 477

Ryan, K. 53, 55, 56, 57, 103, 106, 109, 110, 140, 159, 161,

493

Ryan, M. K. 68

Saarni, C. 281

Salovey, P. 274–5, 276

Samuelson, P. 75

Sanger, M. G. 106

Scales, P. C. 291, 459–60

Schaps, E. 265–6

Schlaeﬂi, A. 75

Schmuck, P. 477

Schnack, K. 476

Schneider, B. L. 255

Schonert-Reichl, K. A. 236

Schopenhauer, A. 24

Schrader, D. 69

Schultz, P. W. 477

Schwartz, S. H. 445, 478, 480

Self, D. J. 525

Seligman, M. E. P. 213, 214, 285, 295, 299, 424

Selman, R. 75, 78, 192, 213, 391, 399

Sen, A. 391, 398

Seroczynski, F. C. 501

Shaﬁr, G. 349

Shapiro, J. P. 112

Sherblom, S. 68

Sherman, N. 15, 16, 17

Shields, D. 491, 496, 497–8, 499

Shore, E. L. 68

Shulman, L. 509, 513

Shure, M. B. 280

Siddle-Walker, V. 65, 68, 75

Siegel, I. 161

Siegford, J. M. 519

Silbersweig, D. A. 238

Simon, K. G. 107

Sirotnik, K. A. 104

Skinner, B. F. 20

Slee, R. 210

Sliwka, A. 394, 395, 396

Smetana, J. 122, 123, 124, 126, 127, 130, 185, 186, 195, 409,

411

Smith, A. 19

Smith, R. E. 501

Smoll, F. L. 501

Snarey, J. 65, 68, 71, 75

Snyder, M. 466

Sockett, H. 101, 102, 105, 106, 111

Socrates 12, 13

Solomon, D. 94, 150, 161, 162, 163

Soltis, J. F. 101, 102

Sommers, C. H. 112

Sorabji, R. 17

Sorell, G. T. 68

Sorensen, K. 96

Soros, G. 398

Spivack, G. 280

Spychiger, M. 215

Stanton, E. C. 347

Stayton, D. J. 163

Stefkovich, J. A. 112

Sterling, S. R. 473

Stern, P. C. 478, 480

Sternberg, R. J. 274

Steutel, J. 54

Streight, D. 256

Strike, K. A. 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 522

Suzuki, T. 315

Switzer, G. E. 459

Takahashi, K. 448

Tang, K. 31

Tangney, J. P. 85

Tappan, M. 69

Taylor, C. 85

Taylor, J. H. 76–7, 165

Terman, L. M. 301

Ternasky, P. 101, 102, 105, 106

Tharp, R. G. 165, 230

Thoma, S. 68, 75, 141, 509, 510, 521, 522

Thomasma, D. 512

Thompson, J. 492–3

Thompson, R. A. 95

Thonpson, M. 105

Thorndike, E. 274

Thrasymachus 13

Ting, K. 68

To, S. 414–15

de Tocqueville, A. 350

Tom, A. 101

Torney-Purta, J. 388, 389, 409

Tough, P. 264, 295

Tschannen-Moran, M. 255

Turiel, E. 79, 85, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130,

131, 165, 185, 186, 187, 194–5, 195, 217, 224, 229, 425,

493

Ueda, K. 317

Urmson, J. O. 152

Vago, D. R. 238

Varela, F. J. 224, 227, 228, 231

Veatch, R. 512

Verba, S. 446

Vincent, P. 55

Vozzola, E. 74, 79

Vygotsky, L. 163, 165, 217, 301, 391

Walberg, H. 57

Walker, L. J. 68, 76–7, 80, 87, 91, 92, 165, 510

Warter, E. H. 457

Watson, M. 107, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 168, 169, 174, 255

Weber, E. 123, 124, 126, 130, 134

Name Index s 541

Weber, M. 69

Wehrlin, J. 217–18

Weissbourd, R. 103

Wentzel, K. R. 256, 257

Westheimer, J. 458, 465, 466, 468

Whitehead, A. N. 121

Wilczynska, S. 201

Williams, B. 89

Winzelberg, A. J. 234

Wolf, S. 96

Wong, D. 96

Wong, W. 514–15

Woods, M. 519

Wren, T. 20, 26

Wyland, C. L. 281

Wynne, E. 55, 56, 57, 103, 106, 110, 140, 493

Xunzi 35, 36

Yaegashi, S. 314–15, 316

Yates, M. 95, 376–7, 453, 457, 460

Yau, J. 411

You, D. 520

Youniss, J. 95, 371, 375, 376–7, 442, 453, 457, 460, 462–3,

464–5

Zan, B. 161, 165, 166, 169, 173, 180, 185, 188, 189–90, 193,

194, 195

Zhan, W. 406, 407, 409, 411, 415

Zhang, H. 31

Zhu, R. 30

Zhu, X. 406, 407, 411

Zhuangzi 36

Zimmerman, B. J. 152

Zins, J. E. 275, 278, 279

542

Note: Page numbers in bold are for ﬁgures, those in italics are for tables.

SUBJECT INDEX

academic achievement 258–259

and character education 291

and moral/performance character 295, 296–197

and social-emotional learning(SEL) curricula 275, 279

Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education

(ACGME) 515

achievement

climate supportive of 149–150

motivation 302

recognition of 257

virtues 494, 497