Triadic moral learning and disability awareness

Abstract

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 this triadic conception of moral education by drawing on the movement to lifelong learning where a triadic notion of ‘lifelong learning’ has already been developed, partly in contrast to narrower vocational conceptions that focus only on professional learning. I also consider what we are to understand by the integration of personal, professional and political learning. How do these three kinds of learning contribute to moral understanding, how do they interact, how do they influence our moral selves? I illustrate my key points with examples from my own personal, professional and political involvement with an area of social injustice—disability as oppression.