Dialogic teaching -- in which teachers and students address controversial issues -- has become increasingly common in school education to promote civic participation in deliberative democracy. This study addresses this question: when leading whole-class discussions on controversial issues, what discursive moves could teachers adopt to enact…

In this paper I lay out the bare bones of my conception of practical reasoning, which I understand as similar in all relevant respects to theoretical reasoning except that (as it is put) the conclusion of practical reasoning is either action or intention, while the conclusion of theoretical reasoning is belief. I then turn to ask how, on this…

The discussion of moral dilemmas has long been a teaching strategy for moral education. However, the questioning techniques teachers use to lead moral discussions are not fully understood. With reference to a collaborative teaching research project on a values education video-story, this study explored the authentic practice of teacher questioning…

Students of education encounter a range of pedagogies yet how future teachers' appropriate moral principles are little understood. We conducted an investigation into this process with 10 international students of education attending an intensive course on "dialogic pedagogy" in a university in Finland. The data comprising student…

It may be argued that, from a virtue-ethical perspective, three aspects of a teacher's role in moral classroom conversations are of primary importance: (1) encouraging students to be morally reasonable, (2) stimulating the students' emotional involvement, and (3) guiding students toward a normative ideal of virtue. This study sets out to explore…

This quasi-experimental study at a Northwest university compared two methods of teaching media ethics, a class taught with the principle-based SBH Maieutic Method (n = 25) and a class taught with a traditional case study method (n = 27), with a control group (n = 21) that received no ethics training. Following a 16-week intervention, a one-way…

One of the major purposes of values education is to help students develop more complex ways of reasoning--to facilitate cognitive development. The purpose of moral education in a cognitive developmental framework becomes the stimulation of the student's capacity for moral judgment. With this goal in mind, the teacher must first be prepared to…

Argues that the Socratic method is inappropriate for children because it teaches them to question adult authority before they have the necessary experience and is therefore conducive to cynicism. A traditional liberal arts curriculum, combining transmission of culture with open inquiry, is preferable to attempts to teach critical thinking. (TE)

A simplified inquiry process, structured by the teacher to require students to make decisions leading to values clarification and/or self-evaluation, is provided. (DE)

Describes social cognition curriculum learning activities designed to enhance young children's social and moral reasoning. Activities present challenging problems that children could deal with through dramatic skits, a thinking game, and/or spontaneous discussions. (BJD)

Stages of moral reasoning through which children develop, as researched by developmental psychologists Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, are outlined in the introduction of this paper. The six stages are defined and exemplified by the moral issue of the value of human life. The developmental model, as it is argued, is suitable for instruction in…

This teaching guide presents a description of the inquiry method as applied to the study of India. Some specific techniques are presented that might be employed to use India-related materials for secondary level Asian studies. The inquiry learning method is emphasized, in contrast to most materials on the study of India which offer a traditional,…

This document describes how environmental educators can incorporate values education into their classrooms. After analyzing Kohlberg's stages of moral development, the first section of the paper stresses that the environmental educator needs to facilitate student dialogue and reasoning appropriate to the student's moral stage and to encourage…

This curriculum guide for kindergarten teachers contains values-based classroom lessons which are intended to assist students in the development of a positive self-concept, rational thinking processes, and a personal and societal value system. Teaching techniques include role playing, story telling, classroom discussion, puppet shows, skits, and…

This paper presents preliminary research findings on children's ideological questions and some results of an inquiry among teachers regarding the treatment of such questions in groups of children. The project work focused on (1) what capabilities children have to deal with ideological questions and problems, (2) what is the educational starting…