Reviews Freud's psychoanalytic and Piaget's and Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theories of moral development; presents feminist criticism of them; offers own criticisms of feminist theories from both social class and multicultural perspectives; and suggests ways in which this literature can be helpful to college administrators who design…

Responding to the prevailing approaches to moral education, generally called value clarification and emphasizing the psychological aspects of moral and ethical thinking, this article argues that such approaches are deficient and contribute to what several writers have identified as relativistic thinking among our school children and adolescents.…

Imagination is the exercise of generating new and novel mental images. Because of its utility for the arts, it is primarily thought of as a purely aesthetic tool. And yet, as a cognitive orientation to the world, imagination has much to offer business leaders. Imagination shifts leaders away from ingrained ways of thinking; it emphasizes reframing…

Ninety-six Colombian children (mean age = 7.7 years) and adolescents (mean age = 14.6 years) made judgments about stealing and physical harm in the abstract and in the context of survival and revenge. All participants judged it wrong to steal or hurt others because of considerations with justice and welfare, and most also judged it wrong to engage…

There is a strong consensus in the educational literature that teaching is an inherently moral endeavour, and that the moral work of teachers is of central importance to education. However, programmes of teacher education in the USA typically do not reflect these beliefs in their curricula. One reason for this inconsistency is that researchers…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether aspects of conscience cohere into broader dimensions and to examine how these broader dimensions of conscience relate to parenting, temperament, and social behavior. One hundred and thirteen adolescents (M age = 15.88 years, 51% female) completed measures of sympathy, guilt, empathic anger, shame,…

This study takes up the challenge of middle level researchers to investigate the extent to which schools prepare young adolescents to commit themselves to serve the public interest. One way of assessing the orientation of children and adolescents to the public good is through their emerging self-understanding. This study analyzes middle school…

In response to the difficult social, economic and political problems that Colombia faces, such as inequality, discrimination, weak civil society--fuelled by illegality and drug trafficking--the Colombian Ministry of Education has embarked on an ambitious citizenship education program, with the hope of strengthening the role of education by…

This study examines variation in moral judgment level as measured by the Defining Issues Test 2 (DIT-2; J. R. Rest & D. Narvaez, 1998), based on individual demographic information and educational contexts. Individual DIT-2 scores and demographic information were obtained from the archived data sets housed at the Center for the Study of Ethical…

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of elementary school physical education teachers towards teaching character education related to the variables respect, honesty, fairness and self-discipline and to examine their attitudes towards the character development of their fourth and/or fifth grade students related to the variables…

Background/Context: Results of the few studies that have investigated moral reasoning in education students suggest that such reasoning may be less advanced for them than for college students with non-education majors and that education students do not appear to advance in moral reasoning from freshman to senior year. Purpose: The purpose of the…

Roughly forty million boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 18 take part in organized athletic activities, most of which are not school-based. Boys and girls play in sports as varied as swimming, baseball, soccer, wrestling, and field hockey. The great majority participate in "recreational" leagues in which teams enroll all-comers, compete…

Papers from the proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the Bulgarian Comparative Education Society were submitted in two volumes. Volume 1 contains papers submitted at the conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria, June 14-17, 2016. Volume 2 contains papers submitted at the 4th International Partner Conference of the International Research Centre…

Kohlberg has produced the most influential theory of moral development both within individuals and within society. As a cognitive-developmentalist, Kohlberg considered mathematical and logical intellectual operations to underlie both social and moral operations. The hierarchical arrangement of the stages was thus grounded in the hierarchical…

In an examination of the relationship between academic giftedness and the development of moral reasoning, six story pairs varying intentionality with either personal injury or property damage were group administered to 104 third and fourth graders, 52 of whom had been previously identified as gifted. Results failed to demonstrate any significant…