The world is facing crises at the personal, community and national levels, disconnection from traditional value systems and loss of a guiding moral compass. While religion is certainly not the only basis for personal and societal values, religion can provide a moral system that is sorely needed. In Islam, great wisdom can be found in the holy…

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…

There could hardly have been a more influential twentieth-century philosophical essay than Elizabeth Anscombe's 'Modern moral philosophy', in which she condemned the prevailing and competing ethics of duty and utility of her day and urged moral philosophers to abandon the search for any general conception of 'morality' in favour of return to…

The cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) have relevance within the areas of character education and integral or comprehensive formation. In recent years, there has been growing interest and a great deal of literature produced on character education and its measurement. In this paper, we propose a questionnaire (a…

The analysis undertaken in this article pertain to the challenge faced by education, which consists of overcoming the negative aspects of contemporary individualism, such as the building of instrumental relationships by people maturing in a culture permeated with it. Consequently, there is limited responsibility taken for the other people…

The article draws on the inclusion literature and the research related to human values to develop a conceptual model addressing conditions under which social inclusion in educational settings is likely to flourish. By synthesising the fields of inquiry concerned with research on kindness, forgiveness, and peaceableness, the article suggests these…

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…

Inspired by Aristotle and Goffman this article considers how the study of virtue acquisition may be pursued through an observational theorising about social interactions in institutions. Adapting Goffman's and Harré's notions of moral order and moral career, it proposes character education to be a dialogic process requiring negotiation between…

As the ideological pillar of modern Japan's imperial system, the Imperial Rescript on Education was profoundly imprinted on Japan's modern education. But, in fact, multiple alternative proposals for developing modern education were put forth in the mid-Meiji period. One such proposal was the ethics ("rinri") education promoted by the…

We investigated direct experiences with nature and socialization as predictors of preschool-aged children's environmental moral reasoning. Children (n = 146; 52.7% male) from three U.S. states completed biophilia and environmental moral reasoning interviews. Parents (n=98) completed surveys about their children's activities in natural areas and…

Undergraduate students showed an increase in moral reasoning (DIT) after a semester-long course covering topics of advertising ethics, completing a new advertising ethics training program (CEAE), and engaging in activities that allowed for reflection. Students placed more importance on postconventional stages of moral reasoning over personal…

Teachers' beliefs about teaching character values are pivotal in cultivating students' character. This study systematically reviewed teachers' beliefs towards character education in primary school. A systematic review following the PRISMA statement was applied to peer-reviewed papers published between 2011 and 2021. This review paper analyzed…

Educational institutions exist in reciprocal relations with broader social and moral ecologies. These ecologies involve interactions of networks of individuals and groups with wider aspects of culture, and are therefore broadly social, and they contain explicit or implicit content with regard to right and wrong, and are therefore moral. There is…

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…

This article details the findings of a qualitative interview study with 30 Religious Education [RE] teachers, working in state-funded, non-faith secondary schools in England. Salient findings included participants' almost unanimous agreement about the role of RE in developing character, virtue literacy, and moral, intellectual and performance…