5 - Moral and Social Education

Abstract

Kohlberg's theory of moral development has generated intense professional interest in moral and social education. Adolescence is a fertile period for intervention because much of a child's moral development can be expected to occur during this part of the lifespan. During adolescence, a child begins to engage in conventional levels of moral reasoning, and the goal of interventions is to motivate this development and to consolidate developmental gains. This chapter discusses the recent developments in moral and social education. It also explores recent research on the plus-one convention, transactive discussion, and moral atmosphere approaches to moral education. The chapter highlights a number of issues in the fields of moral and social education. Recent research offers no consensus on what constitutes optimal stage disparity in plus-stage interventions, the optimal duration for effecting structural change, or the form of the intervention. Recent emphasis on transactive moral discussion suggests that communication skills may be an important precondition for advancing moral thought in plus-stage interventions.