Examines the theories of Socrates, Kant, Dewey, Piaget, and others to explore the implications of Socrates' question "what is a virtuous man, and what is a virtuous school and society which educates virtuous men.".

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education presents what the late Lawrence Kohlberg regarded as the definitive statement of his educational theory. Addressing the sociology and social psychology of schooling, the authors propose that school culture become the center of moral education and research. They discuss how schools can develop as just and cohesive communities by involving students in democracy, and they focus on the moral decisions teachers and students face as they democratically resolve problems. As the (...) authors put it: "...we propose an educational renewal of our democratic society.... We have attempted to establish schools that do more than just teach about democratic citizenship, that are themselves democratic societies.". (shrink)

Este trabajo se estructura en dos partes. En la primera, el objetivo es ofrecer una síntesis de la teoría del desarrollo moral de Kohlberg y de su aplicaciónal ámbito educativo. En la segunda se hace una revisión crítica de aspectos de la teoría moral con proyección educativa. Para acabar, se defiende la actualidad y utilidad de algunos planteamientos de Kohlberg, especialmente la experiencia de democracia participativa en la institución educativa (just communities). Ello se fundamentará a partir de la (...) descripción de algunos cambios acontecidos en la sociedad y en el contexto más próximo en que tiene lugar la educación en las sociedades avanzadas. (shrink)

This article argues that William James's thinking in The Varieties and elsewhere contains the view that social institutions, such as religious congregations and schools, are mediators between the private and public spheres of life, and are necessary for transforming personal feelings, ideals and beliefs into moral action. The Exercises of St Ignatius and the Just Community moral education approach serve as examples. Criticisms of the more commonly held view that James recognised only individual personal experiences as valid religious expressions are (...) marshalled. Furthermore, we argue that moral action or saintliness, the ultimate expression of religious faith according to James, is fundamentally social. The commonalities that the phenomenologies of moral action of St Ignatius and Lawrence Kohlberg have with William James's view are used to support the argument. (shrink)

It is beyond serious dispute that post-war reflection upon and research into moral education and development has been well nigh dominated by an extensive and ambitious research programme influenced and initiated by the modem cognitive developmental theorist Lawrence Kohlberg — a programme which can also be seen, moreover, as standing in a tradition of philosophical reflection about the nature of moral life going back to such significant enlightenment thinkers as Kant and Rousseau. It will also be familiar, however, (...) that a powerful critique of this essentially liberal conception of the nature of moral life and values has lately gathered momentum under the influence of contemporary post-analytical and communitarian social and moral theorists variously under the spell of Aristotle. In the first place, then, this paper argues that a basically Kohlbergian approach to thinking about moral education is difficult — if not impossible — to sustain in the face of this neo-Aristotelian critique; secondly, however, it attempts to explore the possibilities of an alternative virtue-theoretical basis for understanding the nature of moral life and education. (shrink)

Lawrence Kohlberg's writings on moral education remain the greatest influ-- ence on moral education today in the United States. His student, Carol Gilligan, is one of the most influential writers on feminist ethics and on the idea that there are gender differences in morals. In a remarkable passage, Kohlberg described Emile Durkheim's conception as 'the most philosophi-- cally and scientifically comprehensive, clear and workable approach to moral education extant'. He went on to say that the workability of (...) the system has been demonstrated in Soviet Russia, and describes what he calls the 'logical but to us rather horrifying innovations' suggested by Durkheim's ideas. (shrink)

This paper presents an adaptation of Lawrence Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview and Standard Issue Scoring method. The adaptation emphasizes four points: (1) a mixture of less familiar and more familiar moral dilemmas, (2) followup questions which probe managers' moral reasoning by focusing upon key organizational values, (3) the flexibility of utilizing either an oral or written interview method, and (4) a simpler, yet reliable, system for scoring the managers' responses and identifying their stage of moral reasoning. An empirical (...) investigation found that each adaptation could enhance the assessment of managers' moral reasoning. (shrink)

Das Buch bietet eine systematische Aufarbeitung der Forschung zum moralpsychologischen Ansatz von Lawrence Kohlberg und insbesondere seiner zahlreichen Kritiker.

Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief. The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of (...) moral distortion, to which moral philosophers have paid insufficient attention. Some of these are common to all stereotypes—failing to see members of the stereotyped groups as individuals, moral distancing, failing to see subgroup diversity within the group. Other moral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some attribute a much more damaging or stigmatizing characteristic (e.g. being violent) than others (e.g. being good at basketball). But the characteristic in question must also be viewed in its wider historical and social context to appreciate its overall negative and positive dimensions. (shrink)