Education In Morality

What should teachers and schools do about moral education? An international team of philosophers and educationalists examine some of the most fundamental questions in moral education, such as the nature of morality.

Children must be taught morality. They must be taught to recognise the authority of moral standards and to understand what makes them authoritative. But there’s a problem: the content and justification of morality are matters of reasonable disagreement among reasonable people. This makes it hard to see how educators can secure children’s commitment to moral standards without indoctrinating them. In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand tackles this problem head on. He sets out to show that moral education can and should be fully rational. It is true that many moral standards and justificatory theories are controversial, and educators have an obligation to teach these nondirectively, with the aim of enabling children to form their own considered views. But reasonable moral disagreement does not go all the way down: some basic moral standards are robustly justified, and these should be taught directively, with the aim of bringing children to recognise and understand their authority. This is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of moral education, which lays a new theoretical foundation for the urgent practical task of teaching right from wrong.

The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. Book Features: Guidance to help teachers move from classroom moral discourse to engage students in community action. Age-specific lesson plans developed with classroom teachers for integration with regular academic curricula.Detailed overview of moral growth with examples of student reasoning.Connections between moral development and critical pedagogy.Connections between moral development and digital literacy.Connections among classroom management, school rules, restorative justice, and students’ social development.Insights drawn from research conducted within the Oakland Public School system.

Teaching morally and teaching morality are understood as mutually dependent processes necessary for providing moral education, or the communication of messages and lessons on what is right, good and virtuous in a student’s character. This comprehensive and contextualized volume offers anecdotes and experiences on how an elementary schoolteacher envisions, enacts, and reflects on the ethical teaching and learning of her students. By employing a personally developed form of moral education that is not defined by any particular philosophical or theoretical orientation, this volume relates that classroom-based moral education can, therefore, be conceived of and promoted as moral agency. Accentuated by the teacher’s voice to offer the experience of being in the classroom, this volume enables others to transfer relevant practices to their own teaching contexts.

Illustrates how domain theory may be used as a basis for social and moral education.

Moral and citizenship education are again at the forefront of educational attention with the recent governmental announcements about revisions to the National Curriculum frameworks to 2000 and beyond. This book addresses some of the central issues in moral and citizenship education facing teachers today, embedding practical considerations in a theoretical context and reviewing teaching, learning and assessment strategies. It draws extensively on research but is written in a clear, accessible style. Citizenship and Moral Education examines the key concepts and provides an up-to-date overview of policy, particularly addressing: theoretical issues, aims and approaches in relation to moral and citizenship education in a pluralist society the contributions of the curriculum, extra-curricular activities and the school ethos to citizenship and moral education in school teaching strategies, materials, pupil assessment and school evaluation. The book also focuses on key professional and personal issues for teachers in undertaking moral citizenship education.

This volume is unique in providing a comprehensive discussion of moral education in the light of a range of ethical theories. In a balanced, thoughtful and penetrating account, the author addresses important contemporary issues and controversies (morality and citizenship, family values, sexual morality). The author is a highly respected authority on this and related educational topics. The book is written in an accessible and jargon-free style.