Notable theorists have argued that theatre and drama play positive roles in the moral education of children and adults, including cultivating their capacity for empathy. Yet other theorists have expressed concerns that plays and educational practices involving improvisation might not lead to positive changes in real life, and might even have…

The construct of moral injury is usually utilized to understand cases in which individuals perform or witness actions they consider morally wrong. In this paper, we suggest the construct of "moral trap", which entails circumstances in which teachers face pressure to act but are unable to simultaneously meet the demands of care, justice,…

This article introduces an account of moral education grounded in Zagzebski's recent "Exemplarist Moral Theory" and discusses two problems that have to be solved for the account to become a realistic alternative to other educational models on the market, namely the limited-applicability problem and the problem of indoctrination. The…

Several proposals for addressing religious literacy or including religious content in American public schools point to potential advantages for intellectual and moral development. These proposals include moral arguments, which suggest that religious literacy is an individual and social good. Although the proposals selected for this analysis span…

Promoting gender respect is essential to the development of both sexes and to gender equality. This article argues for the importance of moral education to support the struggle of girls and women to achieve respect within unequal and complex gender power relations, especially in poverty contexts. Evidence collected from a sequence of in-depth…

Although some previous studies have investigated the relationship between moral foundations and moral judgment development, the methods used have not been able to fully explore the relationship. In the present study, we used Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) in order to address the limitations in traditional regression methods that have been used…

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is an empirically based organismic theory of human motivation, development, and well-being that shares many points of interest with the fields of moral development and moral education. Yet, SDT has been largely disconnected from these fields so far. How can we define and empirically assess autonomous moral…

Interest in youth purpose is growing among scholars around the world. With globalization, better understanding of life purposes in different countries becomes more important as this generation's youth are influenced by ideas and events anywhere. This special issue contributes to this inclusive, worldwide frame of mind by showcasing work done…

One natural application of Linda Zagzebski's exemplarist moral theory (EMT) is found in the context of moral and intellectual character education. Zagzebski discusses this application in her recent book, commenting that 'exemplars can serve as a guide for moral training' (p. 129) and endorsing 'the learning of virtue by imitation' (p. 129). This…

This article seeks to rekindle a version of the age-old view that aesthetic education can contribute to the development of virtue. It proceeds as follows. First, it introduces the moral beauty view, whereby the moral virtues are beautiful, and the moral vices ugly, character traits. Second, two ways in which moral beauty and ugliness can manifest…

Universities worldwide are beginning to counter the prevailing neo-liberal ideology by paying renewed attention to the moral development of students and fostering their life purposes. This mixed methods study investigates the life purposes of higher education students in four institutions in the Netherlands (n[subscript Dutch] = 663) and Finland…

One of the overarching problems of the world today is that too many people see themselves as dominating other groups of people, and dominating nature. That is a root problem. And thus part of a core solution builds from Kohlberg's commitment to a universal moral orientation, though extended to include not only all people but the more-than-human…

While the idea of exemplification or role-modelling as a means to the education of moral character and virtue is of ancient pedigree--traceable at least to Aristotle's ethics--the influence of personal example is clearly not unproblematic since individuals may be admired or imitated for less than morally admirable qualities. However,…

Linda Zagzebski's exemplarist moral theory claims that admiration for a person is a necessary condition for her to be a moral exemplar. I argue that this claim is empirically unsupported. I provide two counterexamples, astronauts and brain data. I demonstrate that they play the role of exemplars well but receive no admiration and, accordingly, are…

The Defining Issues Test (DIT) has been the dominant measure of moral development. The DIT has its roots in Kohlberg's original stage theory of moral judgment development and asks respondents to rank a set of stage typed statements in order of importance on six stories. However, the question to what extent the DIT-data match the underlying stage…