Given the way that student, teacher, principal, and school testing and accountability measures are currently leaning, it is understandable why a child's moral development sometimes gets less attention than her aptitude in algebra. Yet even with nearly all major accountability incentives heaped upon the tests in math and English, there are still…

The idea that learning involves a kind of therapy goes back to ancient times: Socrates was, at least in part, concerned with a kind of care of the self, and Plato in his early dialogues presents learning as a cure for bad intellectual and moral habits. Our metaphoric use of therapy supposes that worthwhile learning might be considered as a…

While interscholastic sports help young athletes enhance sport skills, physical fitness, self-discipline, sportsmanship, teamwork, time-management skills, self-confidence, and mental toughness, their benefits actually surpass even these. Interscholastic sports also promote life skills and lessons and enhance academic performance. The National…

In this essay Mordechai Gordon begins to address the neglect of humor among philosophers of education by focusing on some interesting connections between humor, self-transcendence, and the development of moral virtues. More specifically, he explores the kind of humor that makes fun of oneself and how it can affect educational encounters. Gordon…

Moral educators have little to learn from the moral theories in which philosophers routinely trade. These theories--including those by Slote, Hume, and Kant--leave behind the concrete world in which the moral educator labors. As interesting as they may be, they merely devise alternative routes to the same destination--to the main general features…

While interscholastic sports help young athletes enhance sport skills, physical fitness, self-discipline, sportsmanship, teamwork, time-management skills, self-confidence, and mental toughness, they also promote life skills and lessons and enhance academic performance as well. Coaches have a tremendous opportunity--and responsibility--to instill…

Are athletics a positive or negative educational force? The viewpoint widely shared across academe is that participation in intercollegiate athletics has a positive impact on students and contributes to learning and moral development. Often, this notion is captured in the phrase "character development," a shorthand way to describe the individual…

The following describes the philosophies of Confucius (Confucianism) and John Dewey (pragmatism/instrumentalism/experimentalism) and their views toward vocational, technical, general academic instruction, and the development of morals and values as espoused throughout Asia and America during a span of history from 551 BCE to 1949 CE. This is not…

In this paper I develop an alternative to prevailing moral development assumptions in early childhood education. Drawing on a Bakhtinian theoretical framework, theories of identity formation, and examples from my longitudinal research study of child-adult play, I reframe development as a lifelong process of coauthoring ethical identities that may…

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…

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 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…