As a desired outcome of education, ethical thinking has roots in philosophy, developmental psychology, and political movements that advocate for developing knowledge, capabilities, and dispositions beyond those associated with traditional school subjects. Economists, business leaders, and educators have long advocated for preparing students for an…

Character development in higher education is a complex process. This process has often been delegated to a single course on ethics or courses on religion. The authors of this article pose an alternative higher educational process whereby character development is rooted in a series of abilities that are contextualized throughout the entire…

There are good reasons to be very careful about generalizations about Catholic higher education in the United States. Recall that the 220 or so Catholic colleges and universities are of very different kinds, very different sizes, with different student bodies, and are located in different parts of a country that sometimes have quite different…

Challenges studies supporting Kohlberg's claim of invariance in the development of moral judgment which maintain that subjects' preferred responses to moral dilemmas are based on higher stages of thinking. Findings indicate language rather than levels of thinking is a significant factor in subjects' response preferences. (CM)

The origins of energy-related attitudes are considered by: (1) defining an attitude continuum; (2) suggesting the role of cognitive factors in attitude formation; and (3) presenting data on the knowledge and attitudes of college students. Correlational findings suggest that greater information mastery promotes somewhat more positive environmental…

A moral development scale (Defining Issues Test) administered to students as entering freshmen and 4 years later indicated a significant decrease in conventional reasoning and an increase in principled reasoning. (Author)

Assessed the level of student moral development based on results of the Defining Issues Test. Results supported the hypothesis that there is no significant difference in the assessed stage of moral development across levels of sorority/fraternity membership, across sex, and across year in college. (RC)

Freshman composition students have difficulties in moving to new stages of cognitive ability similar to the difficulties experienced by poorer writers in moving to new levels of syntactic maturity. A model of moral/cognitive development created by Lawrence Kohlberg indicates that human responses to moral choices move through as many as six stages…

The reliability and construct validity of the Kohlberg Moral Judgment Scale, the Gilligan et al's Sexual Moral Development Scale, Maitland and Goldman's Objective Moral Development Scale, and Hogan's Maturity of Moral Judgment Scale were compared for a sample of male and female graduate students. (EVH)

Studied moral development as a nonadditive, interactive function of both recognized cognitive abilities and interpersonal security. Data showed preservice teachers (N=139) had a mean moral development score at about the national norm. Suggests constraints placed on moral thought by one's prepotent conative level should be considered in curricular…

In an attempt to understand human aggressive behavior, psychologists have explored and emphasized variables related to the aggressor, the victim, and the situation, e.g., intentions of the aggressor and the consequences for the victim. Observer-related variables, such as level of moral reasoning have not been studied. To examine the relationship…

Reports a study which examined objective ratings of the moral issues expressed in the Defining Issues Test (DIT) items in relation to verbal reports of the reasoning with which those ratings were generated. Finds that differences in the educational level of the subjects were significant. A case is made for verbal assessment of information on…

The encoding and processing components of moral judgment-making responses were investigated by using a "thinking aloud" response mode to Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT) of moral judgment. Three subject groups were asked to "think aloud" as they took the DIT: (1) 30 male and female graduate students from a philosophy…

Studies the development of moral autonomy in 720 Australian secondary school and university students between the ages of 12 and 21. Examines autonomy development in the context of moral judgments. Finds the need to add a dimension of individual differences to the single dimension used to describe developmental changes. (Author/NL)

Specifies rules individuals use to make moral judgments, suggesting that certain culturally transmitted excuses are generally believed to absolve people of blame for harming others. Areas discussed include accepting excuses, children's moral judgments (including Piagetian theory), accidental harm, learning excusing conditions, and a theory of…