Moral awareness among future development agents: an action study

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe the moral awareness of future development agents in Malaysia. This study involved a group of senior students from the Developmental Studies program of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, National University of Malaysia. The underpinning theories for this study have been based on the Rest's model on moral decision-making and Kohlberg's moral on cognitive development theory. The moral awareness of the students is considerably at high level scores. However, there are some elements of ambiguity in terms of percepting whether the encountered issue is merely violation of laws or ethical violation as well. This article is innovatively reviewing moral awareness of the future development agents based on theories of Rest and Kohlberg. As far as promoting a responsible and ethical decision-making are concerned, this article would render the present value of moral awareness in order to improve the scopes and approach of development education based on current needs and gaps.