I argue that Spinoza attributes to society the role of moral educator, a role that is to be carried out via Religion and Politics and hence also via an educational system. In his account, the social body is given the task of applying and transmitting a notion of virtue whose criterion is enhanced freedom, yet that freedom paradoxically must be…

This essay focuses on epiphanies -- moments when an insight or revelation captures our attention and summons us to become a better version of ourselves. The role of epiphanies in moral transformation, however, raises a potentially troublesome question. Namely, is the cultivation of epiphanies yet another vexed attempt at moral education? Kevin…

This paper articulates how the teaching of movement, physical activity and sport, through formal education and schooling, and the medium of physical education, affords opportunities for twenty-first-century character education. We begin by outlining our theoretical framework for character education and identify how character-traits developed…

Higher education carries the potential to transform the troubled state of affairs--from political discord to social injustice--evident in U.S. society. Benefits to the public good can be realized to the extent that college helps students develop a framework for ethical decision making, socially responsible leadership, compassionate engagement with…

This study explores the relationship between service learning and moral development. During a phenomenographic examination of a service-learning project in the Midwest, researchers identified ways that participants conceived of justice. These conceptions were analyzed with a Neo-Kohlbergian approach to post-conventional moral thinking and mapped…

In this essay, I try to make sense out of Kant's unusual concept of grace, particularly as regards its uneasy relationship to education within the context of the effort to overcome evil. The key to the puzzle, I argue, lies in what I call 'moral receptivity'. Part of education's job is to make us morally receptive to grace by preparing us for its…

Background/purpose: The integration of moral values into EFL teaching has been an important issue in Indonesia as multimodal literacy practices can be employed to foster both language learning and moral development among young learners. This study investigated how multimodal learning can be used to promote moral values alongside language skills…

For Richard Rorty as well as Stanley Cavell, the realm of the literary carries particular educational force. Literature holds the potential to lead the insensitive and the superficial towards the responsive and the detailed. Literature prompts an interrogation of everyday expressions and the felt meanings we decide to invest or not to invest…

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…

The struggle to become lucid is at the heart of The Myth of Sisyphus. To understand the absurd is to understand that the fit between our conception of the world and the world itself is fraught with uncertainty; lucidity is the elucidation of the absurd. To be lucid is to revolt against the type of certainty that leads to suffering; to revolt…

With the purpose of ending wars, international organizations and governments promote reintegration projects that seek to transform combatants affiliated with illegal armed groups into citizens through education. The assumption behind these efforts is that through education, ex-combatants will become economically independent, overcome…

This article argues that the dominant sustainable development approach fails to acknowledge the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of social and environmental issues, and that sustainability requires a "transformational" approach, involving a fundamental change in how humans relate to each other and to nature. The authors propose…

The paper explores how might teacher educators engage with teachers' difficult knowledge and negotiate competing moral truths, when this effort obviously fails to provide adequate 'answers' or 'solutions'. Although the paper is theoretical, this question's point of departure is an incident from a series of teacher workshops in Cyprus. The question…

Paige (2002) affirmed that a 'nonkilling society implies a disciplinary shift to nonkilling creativity'. Creativity is indispensable in the search for peaceful alternatives for the positive transformation of conflicts, inherent in human relationships. Creativity can help individuals to think and act peacefully, to find different alternatives to…

This article presents the process and results of an action research project conducted during collaboration between one professor and seven students as they worked on designing a course to help students at a religiously owned and sponsored university become "religiously literate" persons, as described by the American Academy of Religion.…