Moral Education: Current Values in Students and Teachers’ Effectiveness in Inculcating Moral Values in Students

Abstract

Moral values play an important role in every aspect of an individual’s life. It is necessary for the holistic growth of an individual. According to Piaget’s theory of moral judgment, adolescence is the phase where the transition from heteronomous to autonomous morality takes place. During this transition period, the role of educators becomes crucial, as most of the learning in that phase occurs at school. Despite moral education being provided in schools, there is a substantial increase in delinquency. This evokes a question whether teachers inculcate moral values effectively in students. This study focuses on measuring the current moral values in students, the effectiveness of teachers in inculcating such moral values and whether there is effective implication of the learnt moral values. Sampling method was random and the sample size of the students and their moral science teachers are 102 and 12 respectively. The age range of the students was between 12 and 14. The tools used were Moral Values Scale (MVS), Personal Values Scale (PVS) and Teachers’ Effectiveness Scale (TES). The result from that quantitative analysis revealed that the current level of moral values in students range from high to extremely high. The teachers are very effective in inculcating moral values in the students. The relationship between teachers’ effectiveness in inculcating moral values and the current moral values in students is positive, but negligible. But, the qualitative observation revealed that there is an immense gap between the theoretical knowledge of moral values of the adolescent students and the practical implementation of the same. Further studies will be focused on strategies that could encourage practical implementation of moral values through moral education in their real life situations.