Education plays a central role in preparing young people to engage thoughtfully in civic and community issues and to wrestle with complex dilemmas in the public domain. As a democracy, our system of governance offers multiple pathways through which people living in the country can influence how civic issues and dilemmas are addressed.…

Food insecurity is a nationwide, systemic epidemic that effects millions of students on a daily basis. Without intervention, food insecure youth are left to contend with physical, cognitive, social-emotional, and academic losses. This article reviews the impacts of food insecurity on student development and the ethical obligations of the field to…

Among the many models of school reform that have emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, one has endured for more than 50 years: the School Development Program (SDP). Established in 1968 by renowned child psychiatrist James P. Comer and the Yale Child Study Center, the SDP is grounded in the belief that successful…

The field of critical studies recognizes that all knowledge is deeply embedded in ideological, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Although this approach is commonly applied in other subfields of psychology, educational psychology--which is the study of human learning, thinking, and behavior in formal and informal educational…

Teachers are expected to act ethically and provide moral role models in performing their duties, even though teacher education has often relegated the cultivation of teachers' ethical awareness and moral development to the margins. When it is addressed, the main theoretical assumptions have relied heavily on the cognitivist developmental theories…

Student affairs professionals traditionally struggle with how to bring the proper balance to their work. Their work takes place in a variety of settings--some informal, some structured. In each of these settings, they may find opportunity to serve as moral mentors. The authors describe the moral mentor as a professional practicing in the field of…

This article considers how pervasive remains the idea of fixed innate ability in relation to state education, and criticises on ethical and other grounds the language of ability as currently heard.

Care ethics, and moral sentimentalism more generally, have not developed a picture of moral education that is comparable in scope or depth to the rationalist/Kantian/Rawlsian account of moral education that has been offered by Lawrence Kohlberg. But it is possible to do so if one borrows from the work of Martin Hoffman and makes systematic use of…

The digital world is full of both possibility and peril, with rules of engagement being hashed out as we go. While schools are still "hesitant to embrace new technologies as a backlash from the significant, and largely ineffectual, investment in classroom computers as an instructional panacea during in the mid-1990's" (Collins and Halverson 2009),…

Based on the core conditions of client-centered counseling and supported by aspects of psychodynamic, cognitive developmental, and behavioral theories, a perspective is introduced that provides a resolution to the dilemma experienced by counselors and counseling students whose personal values and beliefs conflict with the ethical guidelines of the…

The organizers of the Decade for Childhood have formulated Ten Pillars of a Good Childhood as basic requirements for an optimal childhood. The pillars can be used to analyze the quality of childhood in homes and nations, and to guide policies and practices related to the experience of childhood. In this article, the author shall illustrate, pillar…

The youth mentoring program Big Brothers Big Sisters is one of the first social interventions involving youth in Ireland to be evaluated using a randomized controlled trial methodology. This article sets out the design process undertaken, describing how the research team came to adopt a concurrent embedded mixed methods design as a means of…

The theme of Usable Knowledge in Mind, Brain, and Education will be a special section that will appear regularly in the journal. The section will focus on the synergistic connections between biology, cognitive science, and human development on the one hand and educational thought, policy, and practice on the other. Efforts to create usable…

This paper proposes a cultural-developmental approach to moral psychology. The approach builds on and synthesizes findings from different research traditions, including the cognitive-developmental, domain, two orientations, three ethics, and moral identity traditions. The paper introduces a conception termed a "cultural-developmental template."…

Service learning is one of the most pervasive education innovations of the past generation and has demonstrated much success in connecting schooling with community service. Service learning is designed to be integrated into, and enhance, the academic curriculum. It is believed, and there is growing evidence to show, that participation in service…