Second Edition
There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have man- dates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological rhetoric of the field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last 15 years and points forward to the future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of develop- mental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings, and much more.
Larry Nucci is Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Development.
Darcia Narvaez is Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame and Executive Editor of the Journal of Moral Education.
Tobias Krettenauer is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Education and Consulting Editor for Child Development.
Series Editor: Patricia A. Alexander
International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change, Second Edition Edited by Stella Vosniadou
The International Guide to Student Achievement Edited by John Hattie, Eric M. Anderman
The International Handbook of Collaborative Learning
Edited by Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Clark A. Chinn, Carol Chan, and Angela M. O’Donnell Handbook of Self-Regulation of Learning and Performance
Edited by Barry J. Zimmerman, Dale H. Schunk Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction Edited by Patricia A. Alexander, Richard E. Mayer Handbook of Motivation at School
Edited by Kathryn Wentzel, Allan Wigfield
International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change Edited by Stella Vosniadou
Handbook of Moral and Character Education Edited by Larry P. Nucci, Darcia Narvaez
Handbook of Positive Psychology in Schools, Second Edition Edited by Michael Furlong, Rich Gilman, and E. Scott Huebner Handbook of Emotions in Education
Edited by Reinhard Pekrun and Lisa Linnenbrink-Garcia
Handbook of Moral and Character Education, Second Edition Edited by Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez, and Tobias Krettenauer
Handbook of Moral and Character Education
Second Edition
Edited by Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez, and Tobias Krettenauer
Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Handbook of moral and character education / edited by Larry Nucci, Tobias Krettenauer, Darcia Narvaez – Second edition.
pages cm. – (Educational psychology handbook) Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Moral education–Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Personality development–Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Nucci, Larry P. II. Krettenauer, Tobias. III. Narvaez, Darcia.
LC268.H264 2014
370.11'4–dc23 2013034759 ISBN: 978-0-415-53233-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-53238-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-11489-6 (ebk) Typeset in Minion
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
Notes on Editors xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview 1
L A R R Y N U C C I , D A R C I A N A R VA E Z , A N D T O B I A S K R E T T E N AU E R
Part I DEFINING THE FIELD: HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL,
AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS 9
Chapter 2 Philosophical Moorings 11
T H O M A S W R E N
Chapter 3 Traditional Chinese Philosophies and Their Perspectives on
Moral Education 30
G U O Z H E N C E N A N D J U N Y U
Chapter 4 Traditional Approaches to Character Education in Britain and
America 43
J A M E S A R T H U R
Chapter 5 Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas: Moral Education in
the Cognitive-Developmental Tradition 61
J O H N S N A R E Y A N D P E T E R L . S A M U E L S O N
Chapter 6 Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education 84
D A N I E L L A P S L E Y A N D PAU L C . S T E Y
Chapter 7 Teaching Ethically as a Moral Condition of Professionalism 101
E L I Z A B E T H C A M P B E L L
Part II THEORY-BASED APPROACHES TO MORAL AND
CHARACTER EDUCATION 119 Chapter 8 Social Cognitive Domain Theory and Moral Education 121
L A R R Y N U C C I A N D D E B O R A H W. P O W E R S
Chapter 9 Developing Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities 140
D A R C I A N A R VA E Z A N D T O N I A B O C K
Chapter 10 Developmental Discipline and Moral Education 159
M A R I LY N WAT S O N
Chapter 11 Constructivist Approaches to Moral Education in Early Childhood 180
C A R O LY N H I L D E B R A N D T A N D B E T T Y Z A N
Chapter 12 Toward a Theory of the Just Community Approach: Effects of
Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education 198
F R I T Z K . O S E R
Chapter 13 Contemplative Education: Cultivating Ethical Development
through Mindfulness Training 223
R O B E R T W. R O E S E R , D AV I D R . VA G O , C R I S T I P I N E L A , L AU R E L S . M O R R I S , C Y N T H I A TAY L O R , A N D
J E S S I C A H A R R I S O N
Chapter 14 Research-Based Fundamentals of the Effective Promotion of
Character Development in Schools 248
M A R V I N W. B E R KO W I T Z A N D M E L I N D A C . B I E R
Part III SCHOOLS-BASED BEST PRACTICES 261
Chapter 15 Pedagogy for the Whole Child: The Developmental Studies Center’s Approach to Academic, Moral, and Character
Education 263
P E T E R B R U N N
Chapter 16 The Complementary Perspectives of Social and Emotional
Learning, Moral Education, and Character Education 272
M AU R I C E J . E L I A S , A M Y K R A N Z L E R , S A R A H J . PA R K E R , V. M E G A N K A S H , A N D R O G E R P. W E I S S B E R G
Chapter 17 Smart & Good Schools: A New Paradigm for High School
Character Education 290
M AT T H E W D AV I D S O N , T H O M A S L I C KO N A , A N D V L A D I M I R K H M E L KO V
Chapter 18 An Application of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Dilemma Discussion to the Japanese Classroom and its Effect on Moral
Development of Japanese Students 308
N O R I Y U K I A R A K I
Chapter 19 Moral and Character Education in Korea 326
I N J A E L E E
Part IV MORAL EDUCATION IN RELATION TO CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, CITIZENSHIP, AND DEMOCRACY
EDUCATION 345
Chapter 20 Citizenship Education in the United States: Regime Type,
Foundational Questions, and Classroom Practice 347
WA LT E R C . PA R K E R
Chapter 21 Fostering the Moral and Civic Development of College
Students 368
A N N E C O L B Y
Chapter 22 Citizenship and Democracy Education in a Diverse Europe 386
WO L F G A N G E D E L S T E I N A N D T O B I A S K R E T T E N AU E R
Chapter 23 Democratic Moral Education in China 401
S H A R O N T O , S H A O G A N G YA N G , A N D C H A R L E S C . H E LW I G
Part V MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION BEYOND THE
CLASSROOM 421 Chapter 24 Positive Youth Development in the United States: History,
Efficacy, and Links to Moral and Character Education 423
R I C H A R D F. C ATA L A N O , J O H N W. T O U M B O U R O U , A N D J . D AV I D H AW K I N S
Chapter 25 Community Contribution to Moral and Character
Development 441
C O N S TA N C E F L A N A G A N , A L I S A P Y K E T T, A N D E R I N G A L L AY
Chapter 26 The Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve 456
D A N I E L H A R T, M . K Y L E M AT S U B A , A N D R O B E R T AT K I N S
Chapter 27 Education for Sustainability: Moral Issues in Ecology
Education 471
E L I S A B E T H K A L S A N D M A R K U S M Ü L L E R
Chapter 28 Moral and Character Education Through Sports 488
F. C L A R K P O W E R A N D K R I S T I N K . S H E E H A N
Chapter 29 A Theoretical and Evidenced-Based Approach for Designing
Professional Ethics Education 507
M U R I E L J . B E B E AU A N D V E R N A E . M O N S O N
Name Index 535
Subject Index 542
ix
9.1 Triune-ethics Theory Types and Subtypes 145
9.2 Baselines for Virtue Development Co-constructed by Early Experience 147 12.1 Example of a Voting Process in a Swiss Just Community Meeting 206
12.2 Minimal Elements of the JC Approach 212
12.3 Levels of Participation: a Participation Hierarchy 216 13.1 Trans-disciplinary Nature of the Contemplative Science Project 225 13.2 Dualistic vs. Dialectical Meta-models of Human Development 226 13.3 Hypothesized Model of the Extension of Basic Moral Emotions to
Embodied Moral Principles Through Social-Emotional Scaffolding 231 13.4 Hypothesized Example of How Mindfulness Can Facilitate Altruistic
Behavior in the Presence of Another’s Distress 232
13.5a/b/c/d Four Theoretical Models of the Neural-Psychological
Processes Recruited During Contemplative Practices 240–241
17.1 Moral and Performance Character Heuristic 293
18.1 Two Types of Moral Dilemma 315
19.1 The Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships 332 19.2 An Integrated Approach of Moral and Character Education 337
24.1 The Social Development Model: General Model 429
x
5.1 Kohlberg’s Six Developmental Stages of Justice Reasoning 66–67 5.2 Kohlberg’s Distinctions Between Type A and Type B Moral
Orientations 70
5.3 Moral Atmosphere: Levels, Stages, and Phases 72
8.1 Development Within Domains and Curriculum Implications by Grade
Level 132–133
9.1 Ethical Skills and Suggested Subskills 143
13.1 Preliminary Taxonomy of Ethical Aims of Contemplative Education 228
14.1 Research-based Practices 253
16.1 Primary Conceptualizations of Social-Emotional Learning/Emotional
Intelligence Skills 276–277
17.1 Eight Strengths of Character: Assets Needed for a Flourishing Life 298–299 18.1 A Model of Classroom Moral Dilemma Discussion Process 312 18.2 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Students’ Moral
Development 316
18.3 Effects of Dilemma Discussion Method on Development of Students’
Role-taking Ability 317
18.4 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Moral Stage Across Studies 318 18.5 Pre- to Post-test Changes in Role-taking Ability Across Studies 318 18.6 Characteristics of Moral Dilemma Class by S-T Analysis 321 19.1 Course Listing for Elementary, Middle, and High Schools 329 19.2 Elementary and Middle School MEC System and Contents According
to the Principle of Expansion of Value Relationships 333 19.3 Contents of High School Curricula: Lifestyle Ethics 334 19.4 Contents of High School Curricula: Ethics and Thoughts 335
29.1 The Four Component Model of Morality 508
xi
Larry Nucci is Adjunct Professor of Human Development in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley and Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published extensively in the areas of social and moral development and directs the Domain Based Moral Education (DBME) lab at UC Berkeley. He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Human Development, the author of Education in the Moral Domain (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Nice is Not Enough: Facilitating Moral Development (Pearson, 2009) and editor of four other volumes including Moral Development and Character Education: A Dialogue (McCutchan, 1989) and Con- flict, Contradiction and Contrarian Elements in Moral Development and Education (Erlbaum, 2005).
Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. After college, she was a church musician, K-12 music teacher, middle school Spanish teacher and owned her own business. She also earned a Masters of Divinity. She earned her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Minnesota, where she became a tenured faculty member and was the executive director of the Center for the Study of Ethical Development. She publishes extensively on moral devel- opment and education. Her books include Moral Development in the Professions (with Rest; Erlbaum, 1994); Postconventional Moral Thinking (with Rest, Bebeau,
& Thoma; Erlbaum, 1999); Moral Development, Self and Identity (with Lapsley;
Erlbaum, 2004); Personality, Identity and Character (with Lapsley; Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2009); Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development (with Panksepp, Schore, & Gleason; Oxford University Press, 2013); Ancestral Landscapes in Human Evolution: Culture, Childrearing and Social Wellbeing (with Valentino, Fuentes, McKenna, & Gray; Oxford University Press, 2014); and Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom (Norton, 2014). She is Executive Editor of the Journal of Moral Education.
Tobias Krettenauer is Professor in the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the
Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, and earned his Habilitation degree at Humboldt University Berlin. His research on morality, self, and emotions has been funded by several grants from the German Research Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada and has been published in internationally renowned journals. Currently, he is Associate Editor of the Journal of Moral Education and Consulting Editor for the journal Child Development.
xiii
Noriyuki Araki is Professor of Education at Fukuyama University, Hiroshima, Japan.
James Arthur is Professor and Head of the School of Education and Director of the Jubilee Centre for Character and Values in the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
Robert Atkins is Professor of Childhood Studies and Nursing at Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, and Director of the Robert Wood Johnson’s Foundation New Jersey Health Initiatives program.
Muriel J. Bebeau is Professor of Primary Dental Care–Health Ecology and Director of the Center for Ethical Development at the University of Minnesota.
Marvin W. Berkowitz is Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education and co-Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship at the College of Educa- tion, University of Missouri—St. Louis.
Melinda C. Bier is Associate Director of the Center for Character and Citizenship, College of Education, University of Missouri—St. Louis.
Tonia Bock is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Peter Brunn is Director of Strategic Partnerships of the Developmental Studies Center, Oakland, CA.
Elizabeth Campbell is Professor of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada.
Richard F. Catalano is Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and the Director of the Social Development Research Group in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Guozhen Cen is Professor of Education at the Shanghai Teachers University, Shanghai, China.
Anne Colby is Consulting Professor at the Stanford Center on Adolescence, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Matthew Davidson is Vice President and Director of Education at the Institute for Excel- lence in Ethics, Manlius, NY.
Wolfgang Edelstein is Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for Human Devel- opment, Berlin, Germany.
Maurice J. Elias is Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Constance Flanagan is Professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
Erin Gallay is a graduate student in the Social Foundations of Education at Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI.
Jessica Harrison is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.
Daniel Hart is Distinguished Professor of Childhood Studies and Psychology, and Dir- ector of the Institute for Effective Education at Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.
J. David Hawkins is Endowed Professor of Prevention in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Charles C. Helwig is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Carolyn Hildebrandt is Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Iowa.
Elisabeth Kals is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany.
Amy Kranzler is a doctoral student in Psychology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
V. Megan Kash is a doctoral student in the Institute of Child Health, University College London.
Vladimir Khmelkov is Vice President at the Institute for Excellence & Ethics, Manlius, NY.
Tobias Krettenauer is Professor of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada.
Daniel Lapsley is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, IN.
In Jae Lee is Professor of Education, Seoul National University of Education, Seoul, Korea.
Thomas Lickona is Professor and Director of the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs at the State University of New York, Cortland.
M. Kyle Matsuba is Professor of Psychology at Kwantlen University, British Columbia, Canada.
Verna E. Monson is a research fellow at the Holloran Center for Ethical Leadership in the Professions at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
Laurel S. Morris is a doctoral student in Psychology at the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cambridge, UK.
Markus Müller is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at the University of Siegen, Germany.
Darcia Narvaez is Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, IN.
Larry Nucci is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley and Professor Emeritus of Educational Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Fritz K. Oser is Professor of Education at the University of Freiburg, Switzerland.
Sarah J. Parker is Director of the Reeds Center, New York.
Walter C. Parker is Professor and Chair of Social Studies Education at the University of Washington, Seattle.
Cristi Pinela is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.
F. Clark Power is Professor of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, IN.
Deborah W. Powers is a doctoral student in Human Development at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.
Alisa Pykett is a doctoral student in the School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin.
Robert W. Roeser is Professor of Psychology at Portland State University, OR.
Peter L. Samuelson is a faculty member of the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Pasadena, CA.
Kristin K. Sheehan is Program Director of Play Like a Champion, University of Notre Dame, IN.
John Snarey is the Franklin N. Parker Professor of Human Development and Ethics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA.
Paul C. Stey is a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame, IN.
Cynthia Taylor is a doctoral student in Psychology at Portland State University, OR.
Sharon To is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, OISE, University of Toronto, Canada.
John W. Toumbourou is Professor and Chair of Health Psychology, Deakin Univer- sity and is an Honorary Associate at the Centre for Adolescent Health (Murdoch Children’s Research Institute), Australia.
David R. Vago is an associate psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at Brigham
& Women’s Hospital and is also an instructor at the Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA.
Marilyn Watson was Director of Programs at the Developmental Studies Center and Program Director of the Child Development Project and currently is an inde- pendent author and scholar, Vacaville, CA.
Roger P. Weissberg is Professor of Psychology and CEO of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), University of Illinois at Chicago.
Thomas Wren is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University of Chicago, Evanston, IL.
Shaogang Yang is Professor of Psychology at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou City, China.
Jun Yu is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology, Idaho State University.
Betty Zan is Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Regents Center for Early Developmental Education, University of Northern Iowa.
1
1
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
Larry Nucci, Darcia Narvaez, and Tobias Krettenauer
The first edition of the Handbook of Moral and Character Education published in 2008 responded to a need for a single volume resource that would present the work of leading researchers and scholars in the growing field of moral and character education. The interest in moral education has not subsided since publication of the handbook. There remains widespread agreement that schools should contribute to students’ moral devel- opment and character formation. As was the case in 2008, 80% of states have mandates regarding character education. Internationally, many nations such as Canada, Korea, Japan, and China mandate moral/character education as part of their national cur- riculum. Within Europe the interest in moral education is often subsumed under the broader topic of citizenship education where basic concerns for developing compassion- ate and morally engaged children and youth are at the heart of these efforts. The broad international scope of interest in moral and character education is evidenced by the fact that the Association of Moral Education, which held its 2011 meeting in China, includes members from more than 35 countries around the globe.
With publication of the first edition, we began the process of moving beyond the controversies and debates that have plagued moral and character education by bringing together a collection of chapters by the top researchers and scholars that reflect the state of the art in the field. Since the publication of the first edition, new work has opened up additional approaches to moral education, and has expanded the connections to related areas such as citizenship education. This second edition includes updates of the foun- dational chapters from the first volume along with new chapters that address emerg- ing work in areas of social and emotional development, applications of mindfulness to moral education, sport as a context for moral growth, moral development and ecology education, and a new section on citizenship education. In addition, the new edition responds to the growing international scope of moral and character education by includ- ing authors from Europe and Asia who are addressing issues of moral philosophy, moral development, character, and citizenship within democratic societies. More than half of
the chapters in the second edition are covering topics or include authors not within the first edition of the handbook. All of the chapters that appeared in the first volume have been edited and updated. In many cases these changes have been substantial.
PART I: DEFINING THE FIELD: HISTORICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
In broad terms the debates over moral and character education divide along three dimen- sions. One broad distinction is between those who view character formation and morality as centered on the cultivation of virtues and those who argue that morality is ultimately a function of judgments made in context. The former, who often trace their ideas within Western culture back to Aristotle, emphasize the importance of early dispositional forma- tion and the influence of the social group. Often these virtue-based approaches to charac- ter education incorporate an emphasis on the attachment to groups and the role of society in forming the young as described by Emile Durkheim (1925/1961). Traditional character educators generally fall within this perspective. On the other hand, those who emphasize the role of reason and judgment draw their philosophical arguments from rationalist ethics with its emphasis on autonomous justification for moral actions based on prin- ciples of justice or fairness (Rawls, 2001). The focus is upon the development of moral reasoning drawing from the seminal work of Piaget (1932), and the Socratic approach to education. A third broad dimension is the degree to which educators place an emphasis upon the role of emotion. Traditional and developmental approaches address in different ways the role of emotion in moral and character development. However, the foreground- ing of emotion is best seen in approaches that fall within the category of attachment theory, social emotional learning and mindfulness education. These latter approaches are discussed in detail in chapters in Parts II and III of the book.
In Part I authors address the basic philosophical, historical and theoretical issues undergirding contemporary moral and character education. The first chapter of this section (Chapter 2) by Thomas Wren “Philosophical Moorings” takes us through the Western philosophical schools of thought that buttress traditionalist and developmental approaches to moral education. His is not a “cliff notes” reading of these philosophi- cal positions, but rather a critical analysis of their relative adequacy as bases for moral education. In Chapter 3, Gouzhen Cen and Jun Yu expand the attention to philosophi- cal underpinnings by providing an overview of traditional Eastern philosophical tradi- tions of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism that have informed moral and character education in Asian societies as well as current applications of contemplative practices through mindfulness education in the West.
James Arthur picks up the thread in the discussion of philosophical positions that stress the promotion of virtue through his vigorous defense in Chapter 4 of traditional approaches to character education. His chapter provides a contemporary rebuttal to Kohlberg’s analysis of the limits of virtue-based moral theories, and attempts to recover the role of traditional educational practices that have had a long history in the Anglo- Saxon approach to character education.
In Chapter 5 “Lawrence Kohlberg’s Revolutionary Ideas: Moral Education in the Cognitive-Developmental Tradition,” John Snarey and Peter Samuelson provide an historical overview of the work of Lawrence Kohlberg that spawned the re-awakening of interest in moral education in the 1970s and formed the starting point for all subsequent
developmentally-based approaches to moral education. They offer insights into the history and personal motivations for Kohlberg’s efforts and his later struggle to reconcile the fundamental insights from his own work with Durkheim’s sociological perspective on moral education.
Daniel Lapsley and Paul Stey extend the discourse on virtue and reason opened by Wren in Chapter 2 by extending it to contemporary philosophical and psychological considerations of the connections between morality and the self. In Chapter 6 “Moral Self-Identity as the Aim of Education,” these authors explore whether the developmen- talist emphasis on reason can suffice as a basis for moral education in the absence of an effort to also impact the development of the “self.” They review some of the strug- gles associated with Kohlberg’s initial approach to moral education with its absence of a connection to the student as a moral person (issues that Snarey and Samuelson touch on in Chapter 5). However, Lapsley and Stey do not dwell on that historical debate, but endeavor to place the issue squarely within the philosophical and theoretical nexus that is at the heart of the dialogue represented in the handbook.
Part I concludes with Elizabeth Campbell’s thoughtful analysis in Chapter 7 of the ethical dimensions of teaching, and the ethical dimensions of what it is to be a teacher.
Her plea for moral autonomy and responsibility within the teaching profession is one that must be heeded if any of the ideas presented in this handbook are to reach fruition.
PART II: THEORY-BASED APPROACHES TO MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION
Much of the forward looking work in moral and character education is taking place at the level of theory development and theory testing. These efforts employ advances in developmental and cognitive psychology in a reciprocal process to inform research and theory for teacher preparation and classroom practices in the area of moral education.
Larry Nucci and Deborah Powers lead off this section with Chapter 8, “Social Cognitive Domain Theory and Moral Education.” This updated chapter outlines the basic pre- mises of social cognitive domain theory and reviews research that has demonstrated that concepts of morality (fairness, human welfare) are universal and form a conceptual system distinct from convention, religious prescription, and personal issues. The chapter presents recent work on developmental patterns within domains, and presents research on the applications of domain theory to classroom practices. The revised chapter pro- vides a table with examples matching up development within each domain with illustra- tive connections to the regular academic curriculum. The chapter concludes with recent work at two universities employing social cognitive domain theory in the preparation of pre-service teachers to engage in moral education.
In Chapter 9 “Developing Ethical Expertise and Moral Personalities” Darcia Narvaez and Tonia Bock bring together several cognitive and neurobiological lines of research to make recommendations for moral character development. They suggest that the tradi- tionalist and cognitive developmental approaches to moral character development can be unified in instruction for moral expertise development. The Integrative Ethical Educa- tion model spells out a five-step, empirically-derived approach for intentional charac- ter education that moves from caring relationships to self-authorship. Attention to the neurobiology of moral development occurs when classroom practices foster engagement and communal imagination over self-protective concerns.
Marilyn Watson (Chapter 10) focuses the lens of moral education on the role that class- room structure and affective relationships have for meeting the developmental needs of elementary school children. Watson employs attachment theory and self-determination theory (SDT) to generate an approach to classroom structure and behavioral manage- ment called “Developmental Discipline” that engages the child’s intrinsic motivations for autonomy, belongingness, and competence. Developmental discipline comprised a central element in the approach to moral and character education formulated by the Developmental Studies Center. The revised chapter includes a discussion of Watson’s ongoing work to infuse developmental discipline within teacher education.
Whereas considerable attention has been given to moral and character education at the elementary school level, far less attention has been paid to other age groups. Chapter 11 by Carolyn Hildebrandt and Betty Zan, “Constructivist Approaches to Moral Educa- tion in Early Childhood,” presents the theoretical assumptions and research on classroom practices of a developmentally-based approach to moral development in early childhood settings. Their work builds from extensive research and experience in the application of Piagetian theory to classrooms in collaboration with their late colleague Rheta DeVries.
The most radical theory driven effort at transforming school culture to promote moral development has been the “Just Community Schools” initiated by Lawrence Kohl- berg and his colleagues. Chapter 12 by Fritz Oser, “Toward a Theory of the Just Com- munity Approach: Effects of Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education,” updates the chapter on the just community from the first edition by Clark Power and Ann Higgins D’Alessandro. Oser’s chapter reviews the history of the development of the just com- munity approach, and captures the European experience with this form of moral education. He provides an additional theoretical perspective that extends Kohlberg’s assumptions and develops the notion that a key element in moral development and the educational success of the just community is the confrontation of young people’s experi- ences with moral misconduct.
A new direction for moral education is the integration of contemplative educational practices through what is termed “mindfulness.” In Chapter 13, “Contemplative Educa- tion: Cultivating Positive Mental Skills and Social-Emotional Dispositions through Mindfulness Training,” Robert Roeser and his colleagues describe the underlying Bud- dhist assumptions behind mindfulness, and the current educational theory and research that supports the movement toward integrating the use of meditative mindfulness techniques to heightening students’ emotional sensibilities and awareness of their own motivations and desires, and to strive toward a more compassionate approach to social interaction. Roeser and colleagues’ chapter spells out the directions for future research in this emerging field.
This section of the handbook ends with Chapter 14, “Research-Based Fundamentals of the Effective Promotion of Character Development in Schools,” by Marvin Berkowitz and Melinda Bier in which they present a narrative summary of what has been learned regarding effective educational practices from the decades of research on character education.
PART III: SCHOOLS-BASED BEST PRACTICES
In Part III the emphasis shifts from current theory-based work on moral and charac- ter education to a focus on approaches that are grounded in school-based practices.
This is not to say that these school-based approaches are not also connected to theory and research. The section starts off with Chapter 15 by Peter Brunn, “Pedagogy for the Whole Child: Developmental Studies Center’s Approach to Academic, Moral and Char- acter Education,” that presents the current work of the Developmental Studies Center that began as a theory driven and heavily researched program. This chapter presents arguably the most successful effort to date to apply what has been learned from develop- mental psychology to the classroom. The thrust of Brunn’s chapter, however, is on how its approach has evolved over time to accommodate to the realities of classrooms and schools as it functions to address both the academic as well as social and emotional needs of children.
Brunn’s discussion of the schools-based work of the Developmental Studies Center is followed in Chapter 16 by a review of the current status of schools-based efforts to address students’ social and emotional learning (SEL), and how attending to SEL can complement efforts to address moral education and character formation. Maurice Elias and his colleagues, Sarah Parker, Megan Cash, and Roger Weissberg are among the leaders of the movement that led the Obama administration to place an emphasis upon issues of students’ emotional safety and social emotional learning as core educational goals for American schools.
In Chapter 17, Matthew Davidson and Thomas Lickona, “Smart & Good Schools: A New Paradigm for High School Character Education,” address factors that they argue serve to integrate the combined goals of high schools to produce students who attain high academic success while also fostering moral character. In this revised chapter they make the case that moral virtues such as honesty and fairness must be supported by per- formance virtues such as perseverance and hard work if moral values are to be enacted within a person’s actions.
The final two chapters in this section present approaches to moral and character education in the Asian countries of Japan and Korea. In Chapter 18, “An Application of Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Dilemma Discussion to the Japanese Classroom and its Effect on Moral Development of Japanese Students,” Noriyuki Araki reviews the research examining the effectiveness of applying moral dilemma discussions in Japanese class- rooms. His chapter also addresses the limitations that Japanese schools encountered with their efforts to enact traditional forms of character education. In Chapter 19, “Moral and Character Education in Korea,” In Jae Lee provides a comprehensive overview of how the Korean educational system works to integrate elements from both character and moral education orientations in order to make the best fit between traditional Korean cultural traditions and contemporary educational research.
PART IV: MORAL EDUCATION IN RELATION TO CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND CITIZENSHIP AND DEMOCRACY EDUCATION
This section is new to the second edition of the handbook and provides chapters that link moral development with programs that foster civic engagement, citizenship, and democracy education. This section begins with Chapter 20 by Walter C. Parker, “Citizen- ship Education in the United States: Regime Type, Foundational Questions, and Class- room Practice,” that reviews the history of citizenship education in the United States.
As Parker outlines, this has been a topic that has generated controversies about both the goals and teaching methods to be employed. This is followed by Anne Colby’s updated
Chapter 21 on fostering civic engagement among students in colleges and universities.
Her chapter reviews the research examining the impact of college experience on the moral development and civic engagement of young adults. As this chapter makes clear, the process of moral development does not end in adolescence, and the college years afford an important context for the furtherance of moral growth. Chapter 22 by Wolf- gang Edelstein and Tobias Krettenauer shifts the focus from North America to Europe and describes current efforts to integrate citizenship and democracy education across a very diverse range of cultures with divergent governmental histories. Their chapter reviews the range of approaches being attempted to engage in democratic education throughout Europe, and the challenges posed by the oftentimes non-democratic history of various countries and cultures within Europe. The section ends with the most recent and perhaps most ambitious effort at democratic education taking place in China.
Sharon To, Shaongang Yang, and Charles C. Helwig present an eye-opening set of studies in Chapter 23, “Democratic Moral Education in China,” indicating that democracy and moral education are gaining ground among Chinese educators and the new generation of students.
PART V: MORAL AND CHARACTER EDUCATION BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Education is often defined in terms of practices that schools and teachers use to influ- ence student learning and development. Children’s and adolescents’ moral development and character formation, however, are not simply the result of schooling. The chap- ters in Part V address how formal programs for community service, informal learning experiences through the media, and other modes of learning beyond the classroom can influence moral and character development. Richard Catalano, John Toumbourou, and David Hawkins lead off this section in Chapter 24, “Positive Youth Development in the United States: History, Efficacy and Links to Moral and Character Education,” with their revised chapter examining what has become known as “positive youth development.”
This approach inverts the usual attention to youth disorders by focusing upon areas of youth competence or strength with the goal of anticipating problems before they emerge.
In Chapter 25, “Community Contribution to Moral and Character Development,” Con- stance Flanagan, Alisa Pykett, and Erin Gallay enlarge the discussion by discussing the ways in which communities contribute to the moral development and character forma- tion of children and youth through community involvement and institutions designed to work with children beyond the school context. Flanagan et al. underscore the import- ance of membership and developmental experience in community-based organizations.
They discuss the processes of moral development, how a moral self develops through membership and identification with a community where one has mutual obligations.
Community environmental action projects profit from the empathy and interdepend- ence individuals have developed together and help young people enlarge their concerns as they develop skills for citizenship. Their chapter is followed in Chapter 26 by an updated comprehensive examination of the impact of efforts to engage youth through service learning. Daniel Hart, Kyle Matsuba, and Robert Atkins in “The Moral and Civic Effects of Learning to Serve” define what is meant by service learning and civic engage- ment, describe the elements of effective programs, and offer powerful evidence that such beyond-the-classroom experiences shape the moral development and character
formation of young people, including urban youth who face daily challenges of gang involvement, drug use, and street violence.
Chapter 27 by Elisabeth Kals and Markus Müller, “Education for Sustainability: Moral Issues in Ecology Education,” addresses an emerging concern in this age of climate change and global development, namely how to educate young people to acknowledge their moral and ethical responsibilities toward the environment. This chapter is new to the second edition.
It is often said that sports build character. That cliché is critically examined by F. Clark Power and Kristin Sheehan in Chapter 28, “Moral and Character Education Through Sports.” They take us beyond the bromides to look at the psychology of morality within the context of sports, and to explore the kinds of sports experiences that genuinely tap into and build students’ moral character. Engagement in sports and sports teams is a form of involvement in community.
Finally, Muriel Bebeau and Verna Monson in Chapter 29, “A Theoretical and Evi- denced-Based Approach for Designing Professional Ethics Education,” review decades of research on the impact of professional education on the moral development of health professionals. On the basis of this research they offer a grounded theory for the integra- tion of moral education within professional preparation generally and across disciplines.
This chapter closes the circle with the discussion of the ethical dimensions of teaching introduced by Elizabeth Campbell in Part I of the book.
This second edition of the Handbook of Moral Development and Character Education reflects the state of the art and science of the field. This is an area of research and prac- tice that has grown over the past five decades as the general public and political leaders have come to realize like leaders in centuries past that education is about more than aca- demic learning. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” Still, perspectives vary in how best to go about the process of education for moral development, and whether the emphasis should be placed on the cultivation of virtue, or the development of moral judgment. Moreover, there are concerns about the premature application of developmental research to school practices (Nucci & Turiel, 2009). Nevertheless, there is a convergence of opinion around the need to continue research and inquiry in this area, and to encourage schools and teachers to include attention to moral development in their educational practices. It is our belief that this second edition will serve as a valuable resource for efforts to engage in both research and practice in the area of moral development and character education.
REFERENCES
Durkheim, E. (1925/1961). Moral education. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Nucci, L., & Narvaez, D. (2008). Handbook of moral and character education. New York: Routledge.
Nucci, L., & Turiel, E. (2009). Capturing the complexity of moral development and education. Mind, Brain, and Education, 3, 151–159.
Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. New York: Free Press.
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Part I
Defining the Field
Historical, Philosophical, and Theoretical Foundations
11
2
PHILOSOPHICAL MOORINGS Thomas Wren
As with the rest of human life, morality and moral education have an outside and an inside. Seen from the outside, morality provides a way of getting along with others, and from the inside it is a way of getting along with oneself. In other words, moral educa- tion is at once a necessary condition for social control and an indispensable means of self-realization. Most of us, including philosophers and psychologists as well as parents and educators, assume that these two functions of morality sustain each other: what is good for society is good for our kids, and vice versa. Although Nietzsche and a few other so-called rugged individualists have rejected this assumption I will not spend time defending it in this chapter. Instead I will focus on the second of these two perspectives, the “inside view.”1 My motives for doing this are twofold. First of all, I want to unpack the general understanding, shared by contemporary educators of all persuasions, that morality is a form of self-realization. Also, I want to situate this understanding within the philosophical tradition of what, using the term in its broadest possible sense, I will simply call “human development.”
Specialists in the fields of education and psychology may object that not all concep- tions of moral education are developmental, and that is certainly true if we understand development in the biological sense of an organic unfolding of innate powers, taking place within a reasonably stable environment that sustains but does not itself shape the developmental process. It is also true if we understand development in a nonbiological but equally narrow sense as an ordered progress through cognitive stages, each of which has its own logical structure.2 But our everyday concept of human development is not so narrow: there what is distinctive is not its inevitability or logical structure, but its norma- tivity. Plainly put, most of us think of development as a movement from a less desirable state to a better one, even though in the case of human development the “betterness” at issue—namely, human flourishing—is subject to philosophical debate.
In what follows I will trace the way philosophers have formulated the fundamental developmental idea of human flourishing, since I believe that the history of their
struggles to understand what it means to be human have shaped the ways in which con- temporary moral educators understand their own enterprise. I am tempted to say that here as elsewhere in the history of ideas, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. However, to say this would oversimplify the way theories emerge within an intellectual tradition. It would be more realistic, I believe, to think of traditions, including our philosophical tra- dition, as providing necessary albeit usually unnoticed moorings for a specific theory or practice such as character education or moral judgment development. Thanks to these moorings a theory or practice is secured, stabilized, and thereby rendered intellectually plausible and practically useful. This point applies across the board, but as we will see in the following pages it is especially true for the theory, research, and practice of moral and character education.
When I spoke just now of “our philosophical tradition” I had in mind the usual pan- theon of Western philosophers, beginning of course with the Greeks. One could begin even further back, since ancient non-Western thought is rich with insights into the moral dimension of selfhood—or better, the liberation from the demands of the self. However, the non-Western part of our story is well covered in the next chapter, so let’s begin with what might be called the early Greek cognitive-developmental conception of human development.
SOCRATES AND PLATO
For Socrates (469–399 BCE) and Plato (428–347 BCE),3 human development consisted in increasingly adequate knowledge of the ideal forms and, at the highest level, knowledge of the form of the Good. This form or idea (the usual two translations of the Greek eidos) is supremely intelligible, and other forms “participate” in its goodness because they too are thoroughly intelligible albeit more limited in their referential range. Since even sensible things and images participate in the intelligibility of their respective forms (the tire on my car can be understood as representing, imperfectly, the idea of a perfect circle), they too have a derivative sort of goodness. Furthermore, something of the same sort also holds for the cognitions directed toward these forms and things: perceptual knowledge is good but intellectual knowledge is better. The movement from less to more adequate modes of thinking is represented in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave (more on this in a moment).
Although the Good was the highest in a hierarchy of ideal forms, it could be known indirectly in the course of knowing lower forms that reflect its goodness—indeed, one can get a glimmer of the highest form from the most banal perceptual experience. This idea is not as arcane or counterintuitive as it might first seem. We use lofty ceremonial language to commend saints and heroes for their goodness, but we also smack our lips after eating a hot dog and say, quite unceremoniously, “Mmm, that was good!” Banalities such as the hot dog commendation have been the subject of language-analytic theoriz- ing by metaethical philosophers since G. E. Moore, but they also illustrate something very important in Plato’s theory of the forms. In our lived experience the theoretical distinction between knowing and willing disappears. In ordinary, nonproblematic cir- cumstances—say on a perfect day at the stadium when the home team is winning and lunch was a very long time ago—to see or smell a hot dog cooking on the grill is by that very fact to want it. In other words, the hot dog is perceived as desirable or, as Plato would say, it is apprehended “under the form of the Good.”
This account also applies to more lofty forms of cognition. Christian philosophers and theologians influenced by Plato have hypothesized that the beatific vision enjoyed by the saints in heaven is at once a face-to-face knowledge of God and a perfect loving union with him. And theorists of human development have said the same thing about knowledge of the Good qua moral, namely that it is the ideal form of Justice: to know it is to choose it. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg are examples of this sort of moral cognitivism.4 The philosopher William Frankena is another. In his classical article on metaethical internalism, he argued that the very locution “X is the good [or right] thing to do” entails a motivational claim on the part of the speaker that he or she is at least somewhat inclined to do X” (Frankena, 1958; see also Wren, 1991).
But neither contemporary cognitivists nor ancient Platonists ever thought that it is easy to attain a direct, internally motivating vision of the Good itself. Piaget and Kohl- berg postulated a series of logically structured stages through which one must pass on the way to the complete fusion of moral knowledge and moral virtue. Plato, on the other hand, simply told a story, his famous Allegory of the Cave. In it he describes a group of prisoners who have been chained together since birth and can only see shadows on the wall in front of them, cast by a fire behind them against crude two-dimensional replicas of things in the outside world, which of course the prisoners have never seen nor even imagined to exist. One of the prisoners is dragged outside the cave where, after becoming accustomed to the bright light of the real world, he attains true knowledge or what we might call the higher stages of Platonic cognitive development. He sees for the first time and with increasing acuity the really real things (here read: eternal truths and values) that were so poorly imaged in the cave. Eventually he also sees the Sun itself, which like the Good, is the source of all things. The story does not have a happy ending, though. He later returns to the cave, where he is reviled by the prisoners for his inability to predict the goings and comings of the shadows on the wall. As often happens with those who try to enlighten others, he is eventually killed.
The beauty of virtue. Plato’s most famous account of virtue is his discussion of justice in the Republic, where he compares the tripartite structure of the soul (mind, spirit, and appetite) to the three classes of an ideal society (rulers, guardians, and workers). Each of these three classes has a distinctive function—ruling, protecting, and producing or consuming goods—which when done well exhibits the virtues of wisdom, courage, and temperance respectively. A just society is one in which all three classes work well and harmoniously together. Similarly, an individual who is wise, courageous, and temper- ate is said to be just in a global sense that corresponds to what we mean today by calling someone a very righteous or moral person.
So far so good. But here as in Plato’s other dialogical writings, it is important to recognize what precipitated his famous parallel of personal and societal justice. Much earlier in the dialogue Socrates had been shocked by the cynical claim, represented by the sophist Thrasymachus, that justice is nothing more than an instrument of self-interest.
In opposition, Socrates argued that justice (and by extension, virtue in general) is not a means but rather a good in itself, a “thing of beauty” (to kalon). But what does this mean?
Is Plato grounding his moral theory in purely aesthetic value? Not at all.
Although he expounded his comparison of a just person and a just society without going into detail about any of the constitutive virtues, it is clear from this and other parts of the Republic that he believed each virtue has its own status as an ideal Form or eternal truth, and hence can be known directly in roughly the same way as are the other Forms
or eternal truths, such as the one embodied in the tire of my car. In the latter case the eternal truth is the mathematical formula for a circle (c = Pd); in the former (the moral judgment) it is a moral principle. Supposedly those who are truly wise understand the hurly burly of daily life in these terms, which in the moral context means that our judg- ments about what to do are based “on principle” in a double sense: the principle provides a motivational component as described above and also a justificatory rationale. Under- stood in this way, Plato’s teaching on the virtues fits with the rule-oriented moral theory of Immanuel Kant and his contemporary heirs—who include not only philosophers like John Rawls but also cognitive developments such as Piaget and Kohlberg—as well as with the disposition-oriented theory of Aristotle and his heirs—who include not only philo- sophers like Alasdair MacIntyre but also most of the character educationists featured elsewhere in this volume.
ARISTOTLE
After Socrates’ death in 399 BCE, Plato taught in the academy until he died, during which time Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a student and then, after Plato’s death, the founder of a rival school, the Lyceum. The institutional rivalry between these two schools is of little historical interest, but the intellectual rivalry between Aristotle and those of Plato’s disciples who remained true to their teacher’s intellectual idealism is important. The contrast is supposedly illustrated in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens, in which Plato and Aristotle are pictured together, the one pointing heavenward toward the realm of the ideal Forms and the other gesturing downward to the earth which, for Aristotelians, was the truly real world.
Plato’s notion of human development was fundamentally backward-looking—the prisoner in the cave was really trying to go back to a pristine state that he had lost, but for Aristotle human development was as forward-looking as any other sort of organic development. It was a goal-seeking sort of process, not a form-recalling one. It was, in a word, teleological. Just as the internal dynamism or telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak tree, so the telos of human beings is to develop into fully functioning, happy, flourishing rational animals. And that is what organisms do when nothing goes wrong. Of course things can go wrong and often do, for people as well as acorns. Even so, the acorns have an easier time of it, since they cannot err. Unless certain external conditions are absent (the acorn falls onto a sidewalk rather than fertile soil) growth is guaranteed, for the simple reason that acorns are not conscious of the end-state they are moving toward.
With this we come to what may be the two most important yet least understood parts of Aristotle’s theory of human development and, accordingly, his conception of charac- ter and character education. The first part is his conception of the human telos as living in conformity with reason. Such a life may appear from the outside to be hopelessly con- ventional, but if the “reason” to which a person conforms is his or her own reason and not just an external social norm then it is clearly wrong to equate good character with mindless conformity. Even so, Aristotle is often read in the latter way, owing to the second part of his theory of human development, namely his account of character acquisition as “habituation.” These two themes, “conformity with reason” and “habitu ation,” need to be disentangled if we are to understand the relation between classical Aristotelian virtue theory and contemporary theories of moral education.
There is an important ambiguity in Aristotle’s use of the term “reason” in the context of moral character and virtue. Sometimes he seems to mean the individual’s own his- torically situated cognitive faculty and at other times he echoes Plato’s notion of Reason as a transcendent reality that by its very nature always seizes upon the truth. The latter impression is strengthened by W. D. Ross’s famous translation of the Nicomachean Ethics (1984), where the original Greek orthos logos is rendered as “right rule” (1138b25).5 However, more recent scholarship regards this choice as far too Kantian, so that now the preferred translations are “right reason” and “practical wisdom.” Indeed, the more col- loquial (and more literal) phrase “straight thinking” may be even closer to what Aristotle has in mind, but this is not the place to quibble over terminology. What is important is that for Aristotle moral reasoning was an interpretation of here-and-now situations, not the imposition of antecedently known eternal principles onto the empirical phenomena of the present moment.
Over the last 20 or 30 years this point has been made repeatedly by Aristotle scholars, but it is only slowly percolating into the respective literatures of moral development and character education. In his early work Kohlberg (1970) dismissed virtue theory as an essentially noncognitive bundle of habits that were not only conceptually and psycho- logically disconnected from each other (character being considered as “a bag of virtues”) but also too situation-specific to be the subject of any realistic education program. He eventually qualified this view (see Power, Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1989) but the line had been drawn, and character educationists such as W. Bennett (1991) who resisted the Kohlbergian characterization of virtue as knowledge of the good also implicitly resisted the idea at the heart of Aristotle’s own view, namely that virtue is cognitive through and through. It is, as he put it in the Ethics, “a character state concerned with choice, lying in the mean relative to us, being determined by reason and the way the person of practical wisdom would determine it” (1107a1).
This idea of practical wisdom or phronesis—sometimes rather misleadingly translated as “prudence”—is the core of what we might call Aristotle’s interactive model of cogni- tive developmental and social learning moral psychology. Moral goodness and wisdom are necessary conditions for each other, in that a person cannot be fully good without practical wisdom nor practically wise without also being virtuous. So put—and this was the way Aristotle himself put it (1144b31–2)—this famous dictum may sound like a chicken-and-egg sort of circular argument. But if we temporarily suspend the chrono- logical question of which precedes which, and instead analyze separately what Nancy Sherman (1989) has called the four areas of practical wisdom, we can see what Aristotle had in mind. We can also see the general outlines of what he would have said about the current disconnection between the cognitive developmental and character formation models of moral education.
The four areas of practical wisdom that Sherman identifies (while adding that there may be more) are perception, deliberation (choice-making), collaborative thinking, and habituation. Each of these areas has its own logical geography and developmental course, and of course all four overlap in important ways. Each has been the subject of arcane debates among philosophers, classicists, and philologists, but their basic features are reassuringly familiar to anyone who has raised children or engaged in any sort of moral education. The first area, perception, is essentially interpretative, since it is the ability to pick out the salient features of a situation. The person with good moral perception can
“read the scene” in much the same way as a person with good social skills knows what to
say at a funeral, an art critic sees when things come together in a painting or concert, a military commander realizes when the battle is turning, or a coach quickly sizes up the other team’s strengths and weaknesses.
This description of perception begins with the concrete situation and is therefore quite different from the top-down account of moral reasoning that is also identified with Aristotle, namely the practical syllogism. In the latter account moral cognition is modeled on deductive inference, where a major and minor premise logically entail a con- clusion. Analogously, the so-called practical syllogism (Aristotle himself never used this term) combines a general value statement such as “My goal is X” with a factual statement about the here-and-now situation such as “Doing Y on this occasion will lead to X,” from which the conclusion follows, “Therefore I should do Y.”6 True, the practical syllogism model incorporates perception—after all, the situation-specific minor premise would be impossible without it—but only as an accessory to the transsituational and person- ally neutral value or moral principle that constitutes the major premise. For this reason it would be a mistake to reduce Aristotle’s notion of perception to the task of applying abstract principles to specific situations. Moral cognition and its developmental story run in the opposite direction: our general knowledge of what counts as courageous, just, etc. is the resultant of many specific interpretations of real world situations. Perception is part of the moral response, not its prelude. As Sherman aptly puts it, “Pursuing the ends of virtue does not begin with making choices, but with recognizing the circumstances relevant to specific ends” (p. 4).
One might object that some people are just born with greater social sensitivity than others, and that it would be unfair to regard them as more moral than someone who, perhaps because of a harsh upbringing or a cognitive processing deficit, often fails to pick up important social cues. However, Aristotle sees the distribution of moral sensibility as an educational problem, not a fairness issue. He would applaud the “sensitivity training”
that is now part of our corporate culture as well of the school and the family. He would, I think, see such efforts as constituting an essential component of moral education.
But of course seeing and doing are not identical. They are different moments of vir- tuous action, and this difference takes us to Aristotle’s second area of practical wisdom, which is the deliberation that precedes choice-making. Like sensitivity, deliberative thinking is a skill that can be learned, in moral as well as nonmoral contexts. Here again we can think of the corporate sector, where management trainees are expected to parti- cipate in workshops and other sorts of programs in which they learn how to improve their ability to determine which actions are most appropriate means toward selected ends. This ability includes such subskills as being able to prioritize multiple goals and to integrate them in ways that minimizes conflict. The analogy with moral deliberation should be obvious, regardless of whether training in this area is done formally or inform- ally. Instruction, modeling, trial and error, vicarious experience through historical or literary narratives, debates about hypothetical cases—moral educators have used such practices for centuries.
Aristotle’s third area of practical wisdom is collaborative thinking, which is both the source and the fruit of hands-on collaboration. Collaboration can be on any scale and at any level of sophistication: within the family, among friends, civic activity, and even across national boundaries. In every case the cognitive requirement is the ability to take the perspective of another, and the affective requirement is the tendency to care about whatever is revealed when one takes such a perspective. Its most primitive version is
