In this paper, I explore the characteristic reason that motivates a virtuously honest person to perform honest actions. I critically examine previous accounts of honesty's characteristic motivating reason, including Christian Miller's pluralistic account, which allows various virtuous motivating reasons to count as honesty's motivation. I then…

Richard Pring (1938-2024) was the first holder of a Chair in Education at the University of Oxford and the Editor of the present journal from 1986 to 2001. This article pays tribute to his legacy in the field of educational philosophy. After reviewing briefly some well-known recurring themes in Pring's educational philosophy, such as his busting…

Is character education flawed as an approach to values education? A 2013 article answered that question in the negative and defused ten common objections against character education as 'myths'. The aim of the present article is to revisit those objections and consider the evidence that has accumulated since 2013. After a brief historical and…

In this article I develop ideas for supporting character education through sociology and virtue ethics philosophy. A combination of Pierre Bourdieu's theory of habitus together with (neo) Aristotelian virtue ethics philosophy is used to promote a critical form of character education--one that accents the individual as well as the social context…

In the past few years, we have seen emerging new work that brings into focus the role of historical change and its moral implications in Iris Murdoch's philosophy. This paper strengthens this reading of her work and investigates the implications of this aspect of Murdoch's thinking for education in general and for moral education in particular. It…

This article takes up three interrelated elements of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy into an initial conceptual framework for moral education and explores a practical application of this framework to a lesson plan. The three elements are moral vocabulary, moral perception, and the quality of our states of consciousness. The framework constituted…

Amidst trends that emphasize languishing patterns in teen mental health, there is a bright spot: social science research indicates that adolescents who develop relationships with adult mentors demonstrate increased signs of flourishing. This social science research on mentors, though limited to school performance outcome goals, offers a lifeline…

The goal of moral education is moral formation and moral improvement. Kant's duty of moral self-perfection applies to people who have undergone preliminary stages of moral formation and are in the position to strive for moral improvement based on a grasp of principle and an understanding of ends that are also duties. We are familiar with standard…

The article discusses the importance of quantitative empirical character assessment for better understanding the formation of character and for promoting virtue and thereby also human flourishing. Attention is given to a number of challenges in developing character survey items along with criteria for evaluating items and examples of successes and…

Educating in a convulsed political context demands a detailed analysis of the new circumstances of our times, especially the current democracy crisis. According to the latest reports issued by international evaluation organisations, one of the greatest challenges for democratic citizenship is the emergence and rise of authoritarianism within the…

This article focuses on recent changes in Rhodes College's Foundations in the Liberal Arts curriculum that were motivated by a desire to help students become competent and engaged debaters of meaning and value in the trying times of the 21st century. I focus on how my own two foundational liberal arts classes--"The Bible* and…

When I was invited to edit a special issue of "Education Sciences" on the theme of "Moral education and identity", I saw an opportunity both to gain a better understanding of how scholars across a range of disciplines construed the task of moral education in terms of identity and--I can now confess--to defend the claim that…

This paper takes issue with the exemplarist strategy of fostering virtue development with the specific goal of improving its applicability in the context of education. I argue that, for what matters educationally, we have good reasons to endorse a "liberal" account of moral exemplarity. Specifically, I challenge two key assumptions of…

The centrality of learners and their learning in contemporary educational discourse and practice, seems to suggest that the self of the student should be at the heart of the educational endeavour. This is not just an educational programme, but actually an expression of a particular way of thinking about human beings and their position in the…

Religious Education (RE) is more than a single curriculum subject and research should give more attention to that fact. Drawing on a lifetime's engagement with RE, this article identifies ten topics that deserve urgent pursuit if the interests of children and young people are to be more effectively understood and addressed. They begin with a…