Discusses how McCadden's ideas about teaching, children, and morality change during his time observing a kindergarten class. Notes that McCadden notices the subtle nuances of interactions among a teacher and her students and ably interprets their significance for both. Asserts that McCadden fails to connect his work with relevant research. (JS)

Assessed young children's perceptions about what misconduct behaviors peers are likely to commit at school and the grocery store. Found more moral than conventional misbehaviors were generated; moral acts were expected more often at school whereas conventional misbehaviors were expected in both contexts; and expectations of peers' misbehaviors…

Discusses Montessori theories for development of social, moral, cognitive, and emotional dimensions of the human personality during the second plane of development--age six to puberty--as these theories relate to the theory of optimal experience. (JPB)

Asked Dutch university and Russian high school students to sort statements in terms of moral sophistication to investigate hierarchical stage structure of moral stages. Found that sorting statements representative of stages below one's own was straightforward; sorting statements above one's stage was difficult, suggesting that reflective…

Values are principles or standards that people have decided are desirable to live by. The question of whether values can or should be taught to college students has been debated for decades, with the pros incorporating moral concepts into curricula and the antes scorning such efforts as not only inappropriate but also intellectually dull. In this…

Examines James Davison Hunter's claim that the moral education establishment is responsible for the death of character. Declares that moral education must grapple with Hunter's finding that effective moral education requires coherent moral culture with a clear conception of public and private good. Compares post-Soviet and current U.S. moral…

Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist, coined the term "Just Community" to describe a community built on trust and resolution, in which each member participates democratically in the development of the rules and regulations that govern their community life (Kohlberg, 1985). In a school, this means that students and teachers alike actively participate…

The purpose of the current study is to explore the effects of community service work and community involvement on perceptions of self-entitlement--expectations of others to do things for oneself--among undergraduate students. Over the course of a 16-week semester, 26 randomly selected subjects (20 community college psychology students and six…

Although consistent nurturing relationships with significant adults are taken for granted by most of us as a necessity for babies and young children, this commonly held belief is not often put into practice. Pioneers, such as Erik Erikson, Anna Freud, and Dorothy Burlingham, revealed that to "pass successfully through the stages of early…

We examined social role-taking and moral judgement improvement after an educational group-oriented intervention emphasizing guided reflection and role-taking dimensions among 11 groups, made up of a total of 61 female and male Italian university students. They were compared to a control group of 59 students. We twice applied Italian adaptations of…

This research deals with the different psychological processes people undergo when they experience firsthand authentic moral conflicts. It also discusses the value of authentic moral conflicts in students' moral development, and reasons for the ineffectiveness of moral education in China. The main reason for the unsatisfactory effects of moral…

Teacher beliefs are mediated and lived in the dialectic of teacher education and teacher practice. We reframe this dialectic of "teacher" preparation as "faculty" preparation, as many faculty are not prepared for the rigors of teaching, and most are not trained in the ethics of their profession. We propose a critical model of faculty development…

Sociologists and psychologists have shown increasing interest in moral emotions such as pride, shame, and guilt, including their developmental role. While these emotions have an important part in normal development, the chronically shame-prone person has feelings of worthlessness, incompetence, and helplessness; a guilt-prone person dwells on…

Based on the belief that critical thinking patterns, language abilities, and social skills that develop from birth to age 6 are foundational to children's sociomoral development, the Phoenix Project was developed to explore the factors contributing to and affecting children's sociomoral development. This pilot project was carried out by the…

For more than 30 years, Kohlberg's theory of moral development has been tested across the world. This paper reports on two studies that investigated people's state of moral thinking and whether or not there are phenomena that cannot be explained in terms of Kohlberg's theory. The first study examined the moral thinking of a group of students, ages…