This study investigates the life purposes and values of higher education students in the Netherlands and Finland (n[subscript Dutch] = 663, n[subscript Fin] = 846). The theoretical framework is built on the conceptualisation of life purpose by Damon et al. as well as Schwartz's values model. The study adopted a convergent mixed methods design…

In the context of the rise of right-wing populism, new debates on democratic education have emerged which focus on the role of affect. The paper puts forth a postfoundational perspective on affects and emotion, proposing an analysis of how democratic education practices mobilize certain feelings. In the empirical analysis of argumentation…

The emergence of prosocial tendencies in early childhood is still not well understood and not commonly tested with direct measures. This study investigated predictors of prosocial behavior (i.e., prosocial decision-making and prosocial creativity) in 3-to-5-year-old children and explored the role of demographic factors on empathy and moral…

While the emergence of sex education in the early 20th century is well studied, religious reactions to it remained under-studied. The paper addresses this gap by analysing the emergence of Roman Catholic sex education in the German-speaking area from the turn of the century to the 1930s. It explores official doctrinal guidelines, inner-Catholic…

There is a deficit in character education research in Latin America and a lack of clarity about conceptual issues relevant to values and virtues. This lack of conceptual clarity has practical importance. The research sought to investigate empirically how school managers and teachers understand and practice character education, with particular…

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 current study examined whether moral disengagement would mediate the association between adolescents' teacher-student relationships and classroom incivility and sex and age differences in this mediation model. We also examined whether the mediating effect of moral disengagement would be moderated by negative coping styles. Participants…

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…

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced U.S. schools to shutter and teach remotely in March 2020, several states suspended external measures intended to hold educators accountable for student learning. Research on leadership during the pandemic highlights how the pause on external performance measures shifted school leaders' behaviors; they used…

This report describes the moral phenomena that students in an intensive Arabic study abroad program encountered as they tried to find speaking opportunities for themselves outside of institutional arrangements. The ways that participants went about speaking activities were accompanied by tensions that they had to deal with throughout the program.…

While the reality of human existence may appear to be an unfair and unreasonable arena, we humans are nevertheless called on to live fairly, justly, and morally. If a just and moral action and life includes elements of self-restraint, of waiving of what would seem to be in one's interests, a question may very reasonably be asked regarding the…

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 early and late texts of the Russian psychologist and philosopher Sergei Rubinstein focus on ethical issues. The unfinished and fragmentary nature of these texts has contributed to the limited exploration of the ideas they contain. Rubinstein's main concern was the possibility of human moral improvement, a concern that originated in the young…

As they navigate academic life, students must decide whether the acts of copying they encounter constitute plagiarism, and whether those acts are wrong. The present study investigated students' perceptions, evaluations, and reasoning about copying. In interviews about hypothetical scenarios involving copying, undergraduates (N = 60) reported…

This paper presents a participant-centred virtue ethics approach, the "Omolúàbí" moral-ethical framework, which moves beyond researcher-centred reflexivity to incorporate participants' moral virtues within a broader research ethics framework. It demonstrates a methodical application of the framework during research with rural…