This article reasserts the centrality of reasoning as the focus for moral education. Attention to moral cognition must be extended to incorporate sociogenetic processes in moral growth. Moral education is not simply growth within the moral domain, but addresses capacities of students to engage in cross-domain coordination. Development beyond…

David Carr (2002) has argued against the use of developmental theories as a basis for curriculum development in moral education. Although we find common ground with some aspects of Carr's arguments, we disagree with several of his criticisms of the cognitive-developmental approach to moral education. He confuses romantic ideology (as espoused by…

Investigates the hypothesis that those individuals who have not reached their full potential in moral reasoning given the limits set by their stage of Piagetian development would advance significantly more than those who have reached their potential in response to a moral education program. (Author/SS)

Examines and dismantles both cognitive-developmental theory of moral education and development and the politically based radical criticisms against it. Considers the implications for moral education of Piagetian cognitive-developmental stage theory and Rawlsian ethical liberalism. Calls for a reconstructed theory based on a new, broader…

Much effort, on a philosophical and a research basis, has been applied to the subject of moral development framed within a constructivist, Piagetian stage-type format. These efforts have focused on the process of the individual's construction of a moral base and the individual's corresponding level of moral development. At this point in time,…

Aside from being an invasion of privacy, values clarification exercises are inappropriate for most elementary students who, still in the concrete operations stage of mental development, are incapable of generalizing moral principles. It would be better to teach concrete problem-solving processes until the formal operations stage is reached. (SJL)

This argument for process analysis in moral education focuses primarily on social developmental processes and educational processes that influence the development of moral reasoning structures. The descriptive-developmental approach, the developmental-ethical approach, and the developmental-process approach to moral discourse are briefly…