Compared to a peer group of average abilities, gifted and talented junior high school students appeared more outgoing, participating, insightful, fast-learning, intellectually adaptable, conscientious, persistent, and moralistic, thus indicating significant between-group differences. (SB)

Discusses research which focuses on the types of experience that foster the internalization of moral norms in an individual's development. Considers the roles of parents, peers, and the mass media, as well as cognitive development and arousal of affects such as empathy and guilt. (Author/GC)

Pairs of elementary school children at different concept development levels were given problems to discuss, in order to examine the prediction, derived from the equilibration model, that when two children holding different beliefs must arrive at a consenus, the child possessing the higher level of cognitive development will prevail over the child…

Suggests an approach to understanding moral functioning incorporating developments in biological and cognitive theory. (Author/MP)

Describes in operational terms the benefits of Montessori's developmental perspective for children from birth to 3 years, and from 3 to 6 years. Identifies optimal outcomes for social, moral, cognitive, and emotional development to be used in educational and psychological research and for child assessment. (KB)

Examined the moral and ecological reasoning of second, fifth, and eighth graders regarding the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Found that children understood negative effects of the spill, cared that harm occurred to shoreline and marine life, and thought it violated a moral obligation. Fifth and eighth graders used a greater proportion of anthropocentric…

Discusses why the early childhood education curriculum should provide opportunities for children to deal with moral issues and think about right and wrong in developmentally appropriate ways. Suggests ways in which teachers can assist children in this development and activities that promote growing experiences. (ET)

Examined Korean first, third, and fifth graders' judgments about authority commands regarding moral events. Found that children judged that a principal, teacher, class president, and child without an authority position have legitimacy and should be obeyed when giving morally right directives. Children gave greater legitimacy to persons giving…

This publication is designed to summarize relevant information on the schools' role in the teaching of values. A brief background on the current status of values teaching is provided and two values education approaches that frequently have appeared in recent educational literature--values clarification and cognitive development--are described.…

This essay emphasizes a need for broad-minded constructivism which posits that individuals have coherent ways of understanding their world and that these understandings are structured and hierarchically organized. The meaning behind the term "co-construction," used in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and other disciplines, is…

Moral development is viewed as a matter of progression in the cognitive reasoning and rationale underlying choices and judgments. Traditionally, retrospective reports of rationales have been used to measure moral development levels, resulting in unreliable information. Information Integration Theory attempts to assess individual differences in…

The cultural universal hypothesis of cognitive development theory, as developed by Piaget and elaborated by Kohlberg, assumes that all individuals, regardless of culture, progress through the same series of six invariant stages in the development of moral judgment. The stages of moral development are transformations in the form of structure of…

This is the second in a series of six units for administrators and teachers to serve the Environmental Goal, one of Pennsylvania's Twelve Goals of Quality Education. The environmental goal states that quality education should help every student acquire the knowledge and attitudes necessary to maintain the quality of life in a balanced environment.…

In this document, one of a series of papers commissioned by Foundations (a development project designed to examine the career development needs of students entering the National Technical Institute for the Deaf), the processes of moral development in persons with hearing impairments are examined. The work of J. Piaget is first reviewed, followed…