Despite the relevance of moral development to professional education, little research has been done to examine the application of moral development theory. To relate Analytic Interactive Style to post-formal operational thinking or "unitary operations thinking," to test the relationship between level of moral development and Analytic…

Measurements of formal reasoning and principled moral reasoning ability were obtained from a sample of 99 tenth grade students. Specific modes of formal reasoning (proportional reasoning, controlling variables, probabilistic, correlational and combinatorial reasoning) were first examined. Findings support the notion of hierarchical relationships…

Research on moral development from a cognitive-developmental perspective has been undertaken predominantly with Western subjects and most often with males. To investigate variables associated with moral reasoning among Palestinian Arabs, 259 male and female university students between the ages of 18 and 26 completed Rest's Defining Issues Test…

This presentation: (1) outlines three educational approaches to moral development; (2) explains Piaget's stages of moral judgment; (3) reviews Piaget's ideas about the development of children's concepts of justice; and (4) discusses comments by contemporary educators concerning moral education and its implications. Outlined in Part I are character…

Theories and studies of adult development are largely confined to adult male career development and ignore a moral or faith dimension of adult development. To determine the faith and moral dimension of adult couples, three hypotheses were examined, i.e.,: (1) religion is a significant dimension in their consciousness; (2) the family is integrally…

Western notions of right and wrong have dominated consideration of ethical issues in various domestic and remote cultural environments. A review of eight generalizations put forth by rhetorician Richard Johannesen on the ethics of rhetoric indicates that many scholars in contemporary speech communication believe that for people in other cultures…

This report describes a faculty development project carried out from 1978 to 1980 at Simon's Rock of Bard College, an experimental program for the younger than average college student. The project had three aims: (1) to develop practical methods of determining a student's position with respect to cognitive, moral, and ego development and to track…

Pragmatic and philosophical cases against codes of ethics for journalists and other mass media practitioners are proposed in this paper. After an examination of the First Amendment considerations related to media ethics, a distinction is made between moral philosophy and moralizing, and it is argued that most media codes tend to be moralistic in…

Social and ethnic differences in moral judgment are examined, and a critique of the cognitive-developmental model is presented in this paper. In opposition to Piaget and Kohlberg, the thesis advanced is that morality and moral development are culturally and socially determined constructs. While Piaget postulated the presence of qualitatively…

One common paradigm used to study moral reasoning involves assessing the reasoning leading to choices among alternative actions, each with moral implications. Preconventional reasoning emphasizes external rewards and punishments, conventional reasoning centers on acceptance of societal rules and expectations, and postconventional reasoning is…

The hypothesized central role of cognitive development in resolving moral dilemmas was examined in sixth grade and college-age females. Results indicated that sophisticated cognitive operations are a prerequisite to advanced moral judgments. (ST)

This study explored the relationship between children's sense of justice for a criminal offender and their cognitive level. Subjects were 60 children, 10 boys and 10 girls at each of the following developmental or cognitive levels: preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. Each child was individually pretested for cognitive…

This issue focuses on values-clarification techniques for the elementary and secondary school classroom. A variety of articles provides general discussions of values clarification, as well as specific classroom activities related to literature, composition, and discussion. A selected list of books related to values clarification is included. (AA)

Before considering the portrayal of values in children's dramaturgy, this paper discusses definitions of values, examines the way in which children learn values and the confusion about values that contemporary children may feel, and reviews books that deal with the role of children's literature in values education. It then identifies five…

This monograph critically examines the growth metaphor advanced by Lawrence Kohlberg as it relates to the development of a moral ideology. Kohlberg's stage theory is viewed as an ideology--that is, as a "style of thinking." Much of the critique in this study is informed by a perspective called "critical social theory." While…