Moral Development

Moral development and moral education are increasingly being discussed by educators, psychologists, counselors, and parents. Incidents of school violence in public and private schools have focused awareness on these issues. In addition, the lack of high levels of moral development is reflected in headlines concerning fraud and dishonesty in corporate settings, legal proceedings, politics, sports, and entertainment. The role that schools could and should play in moral development is still a subject of controversy; yet, systematic research has been conducted throughout the 20th century by educational scholars, notably by Jean Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Carol Gilligan, Kazimierz Dabrowski, John Coles, Rushworth Kidder, and E. Paul Torrance and Dorothy Sisk.