Toward a Theory of the Just Community Approach: Effects of Collective Moral, Civic, and Social Education

This chapter expands upon the concept of Kohlberg’s just community (JC) approach for moral education. It is intended as a follow-up to the material provided by Power and Higgins-D’Alessandro (2008) in their chapter for the first edition of the Handbook of Moral and Character Education. Based upon precursors, experiences and research results, I will discuss suggestions for enlarging the basic idea of a just community with respect to elements of civic, pro-social, systemic, and participation-oriented beliefs. This is followed by accounts of basic functional parts of a JC, a more detailed analysis of resistance to JC schools, accounts of practical examples, and advice on making JC schools work. The final section of the chapter proposes how to expand the theory of just community schools so that moral and social education become the basis for academic learning.