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…

Most scholars consider gratitude as a moral emotion, with only few seeing it as a character trait. As a result, no systematic mechanism has ever been attempted to develop gratitude in children. Given the social issue of widespread lack of gratitude in the one-child generations of China, this article attempts to outline a mechanism of parental…

An ethic of care acknowledges the centrality of the role of caring relationships in moral education. Care ethics requires a conception of "care" that differs from the quotidian use of the word. In order to teach care ethics more effectively, this article discusses four interrelated ways that teachers' understandings of care differ…

This paper makes the case that environmental education needs to be taken up as a moral education to the extent that we see the connection between harm and destruction in the environment and harm and destruction within human individuals and their relationship, and proceeds to show this connection by introducing the key notion of human alienation…

The aim of this article is twofold. Against the traditional interpretation of "the conscience of Huckleberry Finn" (for which Jonathan Bennett's article with this title is the locus classicus) as a conflict between conscience and sympathy, I propose a new interpretation of Huck's inner conflict, in terms of Huck's mastery of (the) moral language…

Since moral action often requires understanding the nature of justice and the development of empathy and compassion, moral education involves the learner's intellect, emotions and will. The lifelong learning involved is thus multifaceted and plausibly benefits from the integration of personal and political with professional learning. I explore…

Care ethics, and moral sentimentalism more generally, have not developed a picture of moral education that is comparable in scope or depth to the rationalist/Kantian/Rawlsian account of moral education that has been offered by Lawrence Kohlberg. But it is possible to do so if one borrows from the work of Martin Hoffman and makes systematic use of…

Moral intelligence is newer and less studied than the more established cognitive, emotional and social intelligences, but has great potential to improve our understanding of learning and behavior. Moral intelligence refers to the ability to apply ethical principles to personal goals, values and actions. The construct of moral intelligence consists…

Though American life in 1923 was significantly different than the present day, authors John Dewey and Diana Brannon share similar concerns about character. Historically, educators as far back as the 1800s have felt an obligation to the community to transcend the primary purpose for schooling by including character education in their curricula.…

One of the main reasons of the fact that Chinese moral education could hardly get out of its predicament is that "self-regard" has been simply and unilaterally interpreted as the absolute opposite to morality, where "self-regard" is merely regarded as the source of "everything evil", and the fact that it is also the…

The school shootings of October 2006 arrested the world's attention. The contrast of innocence and violence, the mystery of the shooters' motivations, the fact that there were five school shooting in six weeks--all of these were factors, but none can compare to the strength of the families who chose to forgive and their witness under fire. Through…

Discusses ways for parents (and educators) to use the life stories of heroes, such as individuals who rescued Jews from the Holocaust, to foster children's moral courage, sense of right and wrong, and commitment to others. (MDM)

Pedagogical intervention regarding engagement with natural, artistic and moral beauty can lead to an increase in trait hope. In a quasi-experimental design with college students the intervention group showed significantly higher gain scores on trait hope than did the comparison group; the effect size was moderate. The experimental group also…

It is an odd mark of this time that the first question people ask about character education is whether public schools should be doing it at all. The question is odd because it invites everyone to imagine that schooling, which occupies about a third of a child's waking time, somehow could be arranged to play no role in the formation of a child's…

This book examines the question of ideal educational aims in a democratic society. Using the 1988 National Curriculum mandated for English and Welsh schools as a concrete point of departure, the book calls attention to: the high degree of specificity of the large list of objectives and attainment targets; the massive structure built for the…