The recreation internship is one of the most critical components of professional preparation education, yet educators have done little to explore the experience from a constructivist-developmental growth perspective. This article presents a practice-based learning framework that shows promise for fostering moral development among recreation…

Regrettably, accountability has largely come to mean suffering externally imposed consequences if results on simplistic, reductive measures of success are not met. Just as worrisome, this notion of accountability is internalized, deemed inevitable, and trivializes our understanding of moral accountability. This essay is an attempt to posit an…

In the West, sex education has always been a taboo subject that continues to challenge the public schools. Drawing on recent developments in some Canadian provinces, I argue that we cannot begin to address the issue of responsible sex education until we first acknowledge that students themselves have a moral and constitutional right to this kind…

In this article, the author reviews King and Kitchener's "Reflective Judgment Interview" ("RJI"). On the "RJI" website Patricia King notes that a widely espoused outcome of college is the ability to draw reasonable conclusions about complex issues based on incomplete and/or conflicting information. Drawing on the…

My professional and personal lives have always intertwined; as someone who works in moral education and psychology--fields defined by historical and socio-political contexts--the political sphere has also surrounded my career. Being a researcher, interventionist and evaluator has taught me that it is very easy to lose one or more of the necessary,…

This article is intended as an initial investigation into the foundations of moral psychology. I primarily examine a recent work in moral education, Daniel Lapsley's and Darcia Narvaez"s "Character education", whose authors seem to assume at points that criteria for discerning moral actions and moral traits can be derived apart from ethics or…

Do moral judgments hinge on the time available to render them? According to a recent dual-process model of moral judgment, moral dilemmas that engage emotional processes are likely to result in fast deontological gut reactions. In contrast, consequentialist responses that tot up lives saved and lost in response to such dilemmas would require…

No other educational issue hits a more sensitive nerve with the American public than the role of religion in the public schools. While the intentions and actions of the religious and non-religious parents and community members overlap a great deal as they conceive of the good people they want their children to become, there is no apparent…

At all levels of education in New South Wales outdoor experiences and outdoor education are a prominent part of the curriculum. This emphasis on the outdoors begins early. Outdoor activities are an important part of most primary schools whether they are public or private. Likewise at secondary level and at university outdoor education is still an…

I respond to Noddings with further clarification of the notion of empathy and also argue that previous care ethics has put too much of an exclusive emphasis on relationships. I respond to Darwall by pointing out some implausible implications of his own and Kantian views about respect and by showing how a sentimentalist approach can avoid those…

This study investigated 202 elementary school children's judgements and reasoning about transgressions when school rules regulating these transgressions have been removed in hypothetical school situations. As expected, moral transgressions were judged as more wrong and less accepted than structuring, protecting and etiquette transgressions. In…

This article examines children's moral judgments and emotional evaluations in the context of social exclusion. As they age, children and adolescents face increasingly complex situations in which group membership and allegiance are in opposition with morally relevant decisions, such as the exclusion of an individual from a group. While adolescents…

Student affairs professionals traditionally struggle with how to bring the proper balance to their work. Their work takes place in a variety of settings--some informal, some structured. In each of these settings, they may find opportunity to serve as moral mentors. The authors describe the moral mentor as a professional practicing in the field of…

In 1837, Margaret Prior became the first female missionary for the American Female Moral Reform Society. She traveled throughout the poorest neighborhoods in New York City--entering barrooms, brothels, and sickrooms. Based on an analysis of Prior's missionary reports, published in the society's periodical and included in her memoir, this essay…

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of institutional type on the moral reasoning development of 1,469 first-year students. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to account for students nested within institutions. Moral reasoning gains were related to, but not dependent upon, institutional type, with students at liberal arts…