ABSTRACT

The above quotation by Alfred North Whitehead sardonically expresses the conventional view of morality that has tacitly guided traditional approaches to character education dating back to the seminal work of Emil Durkheim (1925/1961). This conception of morality carries with it an implicit theory of socialization that places morality outside of the child and calls upon agents of socialization such as parents and teachers to imbue the child with “moral values” through role modeling, emotional attachment to groups, and appropriate uses of rewards and consequences. While this inculcation perspective has a long history and continues to have advocates (see Arthur, this volume), it sits in direct contrast with current understandings of educational processes in virtually every academic subject area from reading (Shanahan, 2000) to mathematics (Saxe et al., 2010; Schoenfeld, 1994). Contemporary research-based accounts of learning view the child as an active interpreter of information and general experience, and researchers and many educational practitioners advocate constructivist approaches to teaching. Ironically then, proponents of traditional character education are advising teachers to ignore educational research and engage in practices that contradict methods of teaching that they employ with every other aspect of instruction. In addition to being at odds with contemporary educational practices, the traditionalist reduction of morality to the acquisition of the norms and conventions of society mischaracterizes morality and the process of moral development. In this chapter, we will present an alternative account of moral development and moral education, referred to as social cognitive domain theory (Smetana, in press) that draws a distinction between

morality and matters of societal convention and personal choice. Following an overview of basic theory and research, we will describe how domain theory can be applied to educational practice.