This article argues for a unique role of imagination and mental images in the moral education of students. Imagination is rendered here as a capacity oriented toward realizable and salient goals; mental images are understood as particular future-oriented self-representations (FOSRs) devised by and held in imagination. FOSRs have four moral…

Psychologists have broadly conceptualized moral identity as the degree to which one prioritizes and defines oneself in terms of moral goals, values, and commitments. We offer a new moral identity measure: one that integrates philosophical ethical theory with an Eriksonian identity perspective specific to adolescence and emerging adulthood.…

In theory, purpose has implications for fostering good character, yet almost no research considers this proposition. This study examined character strengths in interviews with eight adolescent and young adult purpose exemplars and with informants who know them well. Most mentioned, general, typical, and variant strength occurrences were compared…

Ofsted requires UK schools to help students understand the working world and gain employability skills. However, the aims of education are much broader: Education should enable flourishing long after leaving school. Therefore, students' career decisions should be conducive to long-term flourishing beyond career readiness and educational…

In the current study, we sought to understand relations among the key intervention targets of social-emotional and character development (SECD) interventions: character virtues, Positive Purpose, and social-emotional learning (SEL). Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students (n = 1011, ages 11 to 16, M = 12.94, SD = 1.00) from five urban middle…

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric…

Games can invite players to try on moral identities, but players ultimately choose how to respond to this invitation. In this study, I explore how the design of a game and the context it is played in affect whether players tried on a moral identity when completing in-game actions. I interviewed seven students who had played an ethics game and…

This study examined differences in participants' perceptions of their Character Development, Leadership, and Environmental Service prior to and immediately following participation in a North Carolina Outward Bound School (NCOBS) course using the NCOBS Course Impression Survey (NCOBCIS). The three-fold purpose of this study was to confirm the…

Militaries that take a character development approach in their moral education programs but rely heavily on authority figures as subject matter experts to teach soldiers face two serious problems. First, soldiers improperly defer to their instructors and, as a result, do not understand the moral virtues taught in class. Second, instructors are in…

The article presents key components of a pedagogical system for professional and ethical training of future social workers, which contribute to increasing their level of professional ethics. It determines the essence of the pedagogical system, which unities the processes of forming, developing, education and learning with all forms, methods and…

How does moral motivation develop across the life span? Previous research has indicated that moral exemplars have integrated the typically oppositional motives of agency and communion. The present research maps developmental trajectories in these motives that may lead to this end-point integration. Participants were 140 Canadians comprising four…

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),…

Having a purpose is a form of intrapersonal giftedness. An even rarer giftedness is motivation to positively change society or culture. This exploratory chi-square and ANOVA study reports the prevalence, age distribution, stability over time, and characteristics of two change oriented aims in American adolescents. In a sample of 270, 12%, who tend…

Methods of using values clarification techniques to meet the affective needs of students with emotional disabilities are discussed. The theoretical background and benefits of values clarification are briefly reviewed, and suggestions are offered for implementing such a program at three levels of student skill in the valuing process. (DB)

This article reviews values clarification theory and goes beyond its explicit doctrines to discuss shortcomings. (MT)