The Social Domain Theory International Colloquium publishes an up to date list of recent publications from moral development researchers. Click here to access these resources.
The authors draw from their work with teachers and students to address issues of social justice through the regular curriculum and everyday school life. This book illustrates an approach that integrates social justice education with contemporary research on students’ development of moral understandings and concerns for human welfare in order to critically address societal conventions, norms, and institutions. The authors provide a clear roadmap for differentiating moral education from religious beliefs and offer age-appropriate guidance for creating healthy school and classroom environments. Demonstrating how to engage students in critical thinking and community activism, the book includes proven-effective lessons that promote academic learning and moral growth for the early grades through adolescence. The text also incorporates recent work with social-emotional learning and restorative justice to nurture students’ ethical awareness and disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.
Nice is Not Enough. Larry Nucci. Merrill, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008. ISBN-10 0131886517
The only text of its kind, written by the leading U.S. figure in the field of moral development, Larry Nucci’s Nice Is Not Enough: Facilitating Moral Development. Highly readable, this research-based approach to applying developmental psychology to moral education is filled with practical information on how to integrate the newest research on students’ social and moral development into everyday classroom practices. The author provides an overview of how children’s concepts of morality form a dimension distinct from social convention and religious norms, presenting a non-arbitrary basis for moral education that respects cultural and religious orientations. The chapters illustrate how to integrate moral education into classroom management practices and the regular academic curriculum. Filled with a myriad of examples of authentic lesson plans based on social studies, literacy, the sciences, art, and math for elementary, middle school and high school students, this unique and practical text conveys a more accurate account of moral development, especially in adolescence.
Exceptional and distinct, this supplemental text for helping educators facilitate moral and social development in the students in their classrooms should be an essential resource on every teacher’s bookshelf.
Handbook of Moral and Character Education
Edited by Larry P. Nucci, Tobias Krettenauer, Darcia Narvaez. New York: Routledge, 2014. ISBN: 978-0415532389
There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to the moral development and character formation of their students. In fact, 80% of US states currently have mandates regarding character education. However, the pervasiveness of the support for moral and character education masks a high degree of controversy surrounding its meaning and methods. The purpose of this handbook is to supplant the prevalent ideological rhetoric of the field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that both describes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last fifteen years and points forward to the future. Now in its second edition, this book includes the latest applications of developmental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings, and much more.
Education in the Moral Domain. Larry Nucci. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-5216-5232-4.
"In this book, Larry Nucci has combined a rigorous approach to theory and research on social and moral development with great sensitivity to practices in classrooms and schools. This is one of those rare works that intelligently moves between the worlds of research and educational practice."
- From the foreword by Elliot Turiel.
Handbook of Moral Development 2nd Edition, Edited by Melanie Killen, Judith G. Smetana
Psychology Press, 2014, 574 pages
The definitive source of theory and research on the development of morality. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the study of moral development, this edition contains contributions from over 50 scholars in developmental science, cognitive psychology, social neuroscience, comparative psychology and evolution, and education.
Adolescents, Families, and Social Development: How Teens Construct Their Worlds
In this must read book, Smetana employs social domain theory to consider adolescent-parent relationships, parenting beliefs and parenting practices of different cultures and ethnicities. Drawing on the author's 25 years of research, as well as popular sources and scholarly research drawn from anthropology, history, sociology and psychology, this book provides an in-depth examination of adolescent social development in the context of the family.
Reviews:
“Few scholars have influenced the contemporary study of adolescent–parent relationships as much as Judith Smetana. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the ways in which family relationships are transformed during this stage of life.”—Laurence Steinberg, Temple University
Talking about Right and Wrong: Parent-Child Conversations as Contexts for Moral Development
A unique volume which assembles and presents cutting-edge global research about the kinds of conversations parents have with children on morally laden issues, and how these conversations translate into morally relevant outcomes. It will be of interest to scholars, educators and practitioners in child and adolescent development, family processes, parenting and morality.
Review:
"Common sense tells us that parents teach morality as part of raising their children but developmental theory tells us that children actively construct morality in the course of social interaction. In Talking about Right and Wrong, top contemporary researchers show us how to reconcile these two views of moral development."
- David Moshman, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
The Culture of Morality: Social Development, Context, and Conflict, by Elliot Turiel
"William Bennett had better beware! The claim that Bennett and other neoconservatives have made so much of--that America is in moral decline--has attracted a relentless new critic. Challenging the key terms in this widely accepted claim, Turiel argues that an authentic morality not only can survive breaks with communal traditions but often demands such ruptures. Among civil rights leaders of the 1960s and among Arab feminists today, Turiel finds exemplars of pioneers who risk conflict to end cultural practices that lend to oppression the name of morality. Likewise, in the widespread refusal of contemporary Americans to accept inherited patterns for family and personal life, Turiel sees not the selfishness and narcissism lamented by Bennett and his allies but rather a laudable new willingness to consider fresh possibilities for individual autonomy and for social justice. Those who condemn America for its moral decadence--in Turiel's view--simply fail to realize that societies, just like individuals, mature in their moral perspectives. Sure to provoke spirited rejoinders in the ongoing debate over the nation's cultural health."
-Bryce Christensen, Booklist
Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice, and Group Identity, by Melanie Killen, Adam Rutland,
This excellent book offers a sweeping treatment of a problem that all people either experience or fear at some time in their lives: social exclusion. The authors examine the problem from a developmental perspective, offering a comprehensive account of the roots, effects, and broader significance of social exclusion during childhood. This original, integrative account now stands as the definitive work on this familiar dimension of children's social development.
— William Damon, Stanford University
Reasoning: A Social Picture, by Anthony Laden
Laden's argument is extremely rich in content and introduces a wide range of novel arguments, making this book not only one of the most interesting recent additions to the literature about social conceptions of rationality, but also genuinely enjoyable to read ... it combines a great number of challenging ideas with an extraordinarily clear line of argument; it certainly will play a major role in the discussion of social theories of reasoning and deliberation. It is an important contribution which will put a number of questions on the philosophical agenda for some time to come."--Titus Stahl, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Against Empathy, by Paul Bloom
In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion.
Moral Development and Reality (Third Edition), by John Gibbs
This third edition of Moral Development and Reality is thoroughly updated, refined, and expanded. A major addition to this volume is the attention to the work of Jonathan Haidt, a prominent theorist who studies the psychological bases of morality across cultures and political ideologies. Gibbs is authoritative with respect to Kohlberg's, Hoffman's, and Haidt's theories, thanks in good measure to his privileged position, having worked or been acquainted with all three of these key figures for decades. A new foreword by David Moshman introduces the third edition, calling it "the most important contribution to the study of moral development since the turn of the century." Moral Development and Reality will have broad appeal across academic and applied disciplines, especially education and the helping professions. With its case studies and chapter questions, it also serves as a text in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in social/developmental psychology and human development.
The Moral Work of Teaching and Teacher Education: Preparing and Supporting Practitioners
What makes teaching a moral endeavor? How can we prepare classroom practitioners for engaging in that moral endeavor in meaningful and effective ways? This volume brings together leading scholars who draw upon both their academic expertise and substantial wisdom of practice to offer a variety of perspectives on the challenge of preparing today's teachers for the moral work of teaching.
** The U.K. Times Higher Education Suggested Reading List for 2013 **
** The AERA Moral Development and Education SIG Book Award **
** The Society of Professors of Education Book Award for 2014 **
Learning to Trust: Transforming Difficult Elementary Classrooms Through Developmental Discipline. Marilyn Watson, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003. ISBN 0-7879-6650-9.
Marilyn Watson as co-founder of the Developmental Studies Project was instrumental to the creation of what has become known as Developmental Discipline. This approach to managing classrooms takes the process of classroom management from the shadows of “crowd control” into the core processes of children’s social and moral development. As such, it is an approach that asks more of the teacher as it gives back enormous dividends to students and teachers alike. In this book, Watson illustrates the process of developmental discipline through one inner-city teacher’s work with her classroom. This is a terrific book for pre-service and in-service teachers that we now assign as a regular part of the UIC teacher education program. I highly recommend it.
-Larry Nucci
Race-ing Moral Formation: African American Perspectives on Care and Justice, by
Vanessa Siddle Walker and John R. Snarey
Race-ing Moral Formation makes an extraordinary contribution. With historical and developmental sensitivity, this exceptional volume provides a rich analysis of race and moral behavior in everyday experience.
-Margaret Beale Spencer
Ground-breaking and riveting, this is an essential book for any course on moral development and moral education that seeks to explore a major lacuna in moral psychology -- the intersection of race and moral formation.
-Andrew Garrod
The Promotion of Social Awareness.
Robert L. Selman. Russell Sage Foundation, 2003. ISBN 0-87154-757-0, 325 pages.
In this wise and humane book, Robert Selman integrates the insights that he has gained during his thirty-year career as a distinguished clinician and developmental psychologist.….He offers the reader valuable methods for promoting growth in teachers as well as children; and just as importantly, he puts practical methods in the context of a systematic theoretical framework, drawn from the best psychological tradition….The book is a charter for a truly developmental approach to addressing the social-emotional needs of today’s young….
-William Damon
Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education.Nel Noddings, New York: Teachers College Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8077-4168-X.
In this collection of essential essays, Nel Noddings examines alternatives to prevailing models of character education-a sympathetic approach based on an ethic of care. Covering both stories in the classroom and controversial issues in education, Noddings describes the similarities and differences between character education and care ethics… examines how moral education may be infused throughout the curriculum…and calls for greater cooperation across fields and more attention to the practical problems of everyday teaching.
-From book jacket
Teaching in Moral and Democratic Education.
Wiel Veugelers and Fritz K. Oser (Eds.), New York, Oxford, 2003. ISBN 0-8204-6861-4, 216 pages.
The task of education, and in particular the role of teachers, is seen as crucial in preparing young people for society. The authors of this volume argue for a critical democratic citizenship in which students combine autonomy and critical thinking with justice and social care. The contributors to this volume are leading researchers in the field of moral and democratic education and they all combine profound theoretical foundations with empirical research that can help practitioners in their pedagogical actions.
-Peter Lang AG European Academic Publishers
Moral Development and Character Education: A Dialogue. Larry Nucci (Ed.). Berkeley: McCutchan, 1989. ISBN 0-8211-1308-9, 203 pages.
This book brings together scholars and researchers from the two main perspectives on values education. On the one hand are the character educators, who define morality in terms of norms, and moral development as the inculcation of moral habits and standards. On the other hand are the developmentalists, who view moral action as the product of moral judgment structured by the person's underlying concepts of justice and human welfare. The construction of these concepts is fostered by education emphasizing reflection, perspective taking, conflict resolution, and autonomous choice. The book moves discussion of these two perspectives beyond the simple reiteration of old positions by presenting new constructs and research that can serve as the basis for an informed approach to moral education.
Contributors include: Kevin Ryan (Chap 1), Edward Wynne (Chap 2), Herbert Walberg & Wynne (Chap 3), Watson, Solomon, Battistich, Schaps & Solomon (Chap 4), Dwight Boyd (Chap 5), Clark Power, A. Higgins & L. Kohlberg (Chap 6), Nona Lyons (Chap 7), Elliot Turiel (Chap 8), Larry Nucci (Chap 9).
For more information contact Larry Nucci, nucci@berkeley.edu
The Human Relationship with Nature. Peter H. Kahn. MIT Press, 1999. ISBN 0-262-11240-X.
Winner of Outstanding Book Award, 2000, Moral Development and Education, American Educational Research Association.
Urgent environmental problems call for vigorous research and theory on how humans develop a relationship with nature. In a series of original research projects, Peter Kahn answers this call. For eight years, Kahn studied children, young adults, and parents in diverse geographical locations, ranging from an economically impoverished black community in Houston to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. In these studies Kahn sought answers to the following questions: How do people value nature, and how do they reason morally about environmental degradation? Do children have a deep connection to the natural world that gets severed by modern society? Or do such connections emerge, if at all, later in life, with increased cognitive and moral maturity? How does culture affect environmental commitments and sensibilities? Are there universal features in the human relationship with nature? Kahn's empirical and theoretical findings draw on current work in psychology, biology, environmental behavior, education, policy, and moral development.
Moral Questions in the Classroom: How to Get Kids to Think Deeply about Real Life and their School Work. Katherine G. Simon. Yale University Press, 2001. ISBN 0-300-09032-3.
Motivated by a suspicion that schools fail to teach what "matters," Simon, director of research at the Coalition of Essential Schools in California, spent months observing literature, history and biology classes at a public, a Catholic and a Jewish high school. What "matters" to Simon is the integration of moral and existential inquiry into the classroom; she argues that not only are moral and existential questions at the heart of the major disciplines, they are also extremely compelling to students. But too much of what goes on in schools, she contends, is "the forming of uninformed opinions" and "decontextualized fact acquisition." Although she shows how even good teachers sometimes deflect or shut down important discussions, Simon places the blame squarely on the education system that works "against teachers being able to incorporate discussions of substantive issues into their classrooms."
-From Publishers Weekly
Morality in everyday life: Developmental perspectives. M. Killen and D. Hart (Eds.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-45478-6 (hdbk), 423 pages.
The goal of this volume is to bring together current research on morality in human development. Morality in its various forms is a dominant influence on the conduct and evaluation of day-to-day life. The pervasiveness of the moral domain can be detected in every aspect of social life; moral commitments shape the goals and aspiriations of individuals, and moral judgments are apparent in the discourse about most forms of human interaction. The various chapters in the book present the most current advances and consider the complex issues revolving around morality. These include fundamental developmental questions such as Where does morality come from and how is it acquired (origins)? How does morality change overtime (sequence)? How does culture play a role in the acquisition of morality? What does morality look like throughout the lifespan (ontogenesis)? The contributors were asked to address these issues with respect to two overall guiding themes for the book: context (everyday life) and development.
Contributors include: Hay, Castle, Stimson, & Davies (chap 1), Killen & Nucci (chap 2), Arsenio & Lover (chap3), Laupa,Turiel, & Cowan (chap 4), Helwig (chap 5), Berkowitz, Kahn, Mulry, & Piette (cahp 6), Smetana (chap 7), Miller & Bersoff (chap 9), Wainryb & Turiel (chap 9), Hart, Yates, Fegley, & Wilson (chap 10), Colby & Damon (chap 11), Walker, Pitts, Hennig, & Matsuba (chap 12).
For more information contact Melanie Killen, mk141@umail.umd.edu, Dept. of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, or Daniel Hart, Dept. of Psychology, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ.
This highly readable treatment of current work in the field of moral psychology (and moral development in particular) is like a breath of fresh air. The book's integration of philosophy and psychology is superb. Lapsley takes the reader through a comprehensive course of study that begins with an exceptionally clear exposition of Piaget's structuralism and the Piagetian account of moral growth. Lapsley's balanced treatment of Piaget is followed by an insider's account of the Kohlberg project. He employs the Kohlbergian paradigm as the central organizing thesis of his book. Here again, Lapsley is even-handed and comprehensive in his treatment both of theory and practice. One measure of an author's scholarship is his capacity to treat rival perspectives with fairness and accuracy. Lapsley provides voice to Kohlberg's critics by explicating their points of view as if he were a proponent of each alternative In the end, he sustains a basically Kohlbergian position, but does so in the context of the most comprehensive treatment of the field available. Lapsley moves from his discussion of Kohlberg to include research on prosocial development, personality and the moral self, and related issues of virtue and character. Because of its readability and thoroughness, this volume may serve as both a text and a resource for scholars.
For more information contact Daniel K. Lapsley, dklapsley@bsuvc.bsu.edu
Moral Classrooms, Moral Children: Creating a Constructivist Atmosphere in Early Education. Rheta DeVries and Betty Zan. New York: Teachers College Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8077-3341-5 (paper), 309 pages.
This book addresses the question of how to establish an interpersonal classroom atmosphere that fosters children's intellectual, social, moral, emotional, and personal development. The authors discuss the theoretical foundation of this approach, which emphasizes cooperative teacher-student relationships, and contrasts it with the more traditional behaviorist approach. In later chapters the authors demonstrate how the constructivist orientation can be embedded in a school program by focusing on specific situations - conflict resolution, grouptime, cleanup, lunchtime, naptime, and the "difficult" child - and on more generalized aspects such as academics and the overall school atmosphere.
For more information contact Rheta Devries,Rheta.DeVries@UNI.EDU
The Moral Child: Nurturing Children's natural Moral Growth.William Damon. New York: The Free Press, 1988. ISBN 0-02-906932-7, 166 pages.
This clear and highly readable book presents an overview of research on children's moral development. The author draws from his own work and that of others to present a clearly thought out approach to fostering moral growth in children. The book traces the emergence of caring attachments and judgments about fairness from infancy to adolecscence. Damon also describes the constructive role which parents and teachers can play, through "respectful engagement", to foster and nuture moral growth in children.
Chapter headings: 1 Moral concern's from the child's perspective; 2 Empathy, shame and guilt; 3 Learning about justice through sharing, 4 Parental authority and rules of the family, 5 Interacting as equals: cooperative play in the peer group, 6 Culture, gender and morality, 7 Fostering children's moral growth, 8 Teaching values in schools.
Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education. F. Clark Power, Ann Higgins, and Lawrence Kohlberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-231-05976-0.
"The clearest and most compelling theoretical statement on the 'Just Community Approach' that I have seen. It explains how this approach is an extension from earlier views of Kohlberg on moral education….An extraordinarily important book for psychologists, educators, and those interested in social values. This book could well set the agenda for morality research and education for the next decade."
-James R. Rest University of Minnesota
Following Kohlberg: Liberalism and the Practice of Democratic Community.Donald R. C. Reed. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. ISBN 0-268-02851-6, 280 pages.
In this book Donald Reed brings together in one source the psychological research on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, the philosophical premises which undergird it, and the interventions that have been made in schools and prisons based on applications of Kohlberg’s theory. Reed goes beyond this valuable overview to show how this vision of moral development informs a broader conception of social and moral reform. In doing so, Reed illustrates how Kohlberg’s deeper concerns for justice, fairness, democratic community and moral education can be appreciated independent of the empirical status of his moral stage theory.
Postconventional Moral Thinking: A Neo-Kohlbergian Approach.James Rest, Darcia Narvaez, Muriel Bebeau, and Stephen Thoma. Mahwah, NJ: Erlabaum, 1999. ISBN 0-8058-3285-8, 229 pages.
Perhaps the most widely used measure for assessing the impact of educational programs on moral development has been the Defining Issues Test (DIT) developed by James Rest and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota. This book presents the most recent work and theorizing on moral development by the James Rest research group, particularly with regard to issues of development among adults. In this book the authors employ their research with the Defining Issues Test (DIT) to reconceptualize post-conventional moral thought as presented within the Kohlbergian framework. The authors take issue with several contemporary approaches, such as domain theory, and cultural psychology, and attempt to address those perspective from within the cognitive psychology point of view which they characterize as neo-Kohlbergian. The book is clearly written, and should prove to be a valuable resource for researchers and scholars in the field of moral development.
The Moral Life of Schools.Philip W. Jackson, Robert E. Boostrom, and David T. Hansen. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 1993. ISBN 1-55542-577-1 (hdbk), 323 pages.
This book describes how the everyday events that take place in classrooms may take on moral significance for students and teachers. This highly readable account is based on observations sunducted in elementary and high school classrooms. The book provides new insights for how teachers may view their activities and provides suggestions for how to look at classroom events from a moral perspective.
For more information contact David T. Hansen, DHansen@uic.edu
Character Development and Physical Activity.David Lyle Light Shields and Brenda Jo Light Bredemeier. Human Kinetics, 1995. ISBN 0-87322-115, 269 pages.
This book is the first to examine character development and moral action in sport and physical activity contexts. This comprehensive reference: introduces the major theories of character development, from Freud’s psychoanalytic approach to Haan’s model of interactional morality; outlines a 12 component model of moral action that can be used to integrate diverse theories and research findings; reviews empirical research that has been conducted in the area of morality and physical activity contexts; and offers 40 recommendations for encouraging character growth in physical education, informal games and sports, and organized youth sports
Handbook of Moral and Character Education
Edited by Larry P. Nucci, Darcia Narvaez. New York: Routledge, 2008. ISBN: 978-0-8058-5961-4
There is widespread agreement that schools should contribute to students’ moral development and character formation. Currently 80% of states have mandates regarding character education. This apparent support for moral education, however, masks a high degree of controversy surrounding the meaning and the methods of moral and/or character education. The purpose of this Handbook is to replace the ideological rhetoric that infects this field with a comprehensive, research-oriented volume that includes the extensive changes that have occurred over the last fifteen years. Coverage includes the latest applications of developmental and cognitive psychology to moral and character education from preschool to college settings.