Moral education: Cognitive Development & Care Ethics
9 important questions on Moral education: Cognitive Development & Care Ethics
What are the features (or suppositions) of LIBERAL/DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES?
• They do not favour one conception of the good life
> Range of lifestyles, pirorities, roles and life plans
This presupposes moral and political values
• Individual liberty, equal rights, rationality
It excludes certain values
• Prejudice, intolerance, injustice, repression
Halstead & Pike, (2006) p. 28
(PARTIAL) OVERLAP between democratic citizenship education and Moral education.
• Moral education is broader than citizenship education
• Citizenship education is broader than moral education
Missing from citizenship account of morality**
• How should one live one’s life/what sort of person should one be?
Citizenship eduation
Moral education
Partial overlap: Moral core of citizenship education
* Althof & Berkowitz ( 2006)**Halstead & Pike (2006)
Objection to moral education?
• Thought experiment: all parents gone
• But what about schools?
- Historical argument
- Required by law
- Teachers, students and parents want it*
- It’s inevitable
* ResearchNed (2016). Peiling Onderwijs 2032.
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Theories of moral education
• Cognitive development
• Values clarification
• Care ethics
• Character education
Why these?
• Theoretically distinct
• Influential in education
• International orientation (US)
Stages of moral development
What are the Moral Education methods of Snarey and Samuelson?
• Moral exemplars
• Dilemma discussions
• Just community schools
JCS provided school wide democratic citizenship education.
*Snarey & Samuelson (2008).
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT CRITIZISED
• Moral functioning is broader than reasoning
• No attention paid to moral content
• Male bias
• Discussing hypothetical dilemmas are not effective
• Last stages are not universal
• Cognitive development theory changed beyond recognition
What does moral education look like from a care ethics persepective?
caring life, primarily by modelling caring relationships
Through:
• Modelling
• Practice
• Confirmation
• Dialogue
Nguyen (2016), p. 287
GILLIGAN KOHLBERG DEBATE (1980S)
Human condition:
- Relational
- Dependency and vulnerability
- Natural care for others
Ethics
- Care, love, responsibility
- Partiality
Moral knowledge
- Emotions (e.g. empathy)- Concrete cases
Women
- Self-caring
Cognitive development
Human condition:
- Individualistic
- Autonomy
- Self-interest
Ethics
- Justice, human dignity
- Impartiality
Moral knowledge
- Rational judgment
- Hypothetical dilemmas
Women
- Selfless
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