Moral Education

Theory and Application

M. W. Berkowitz, F. Oser, M. W. Berkowitz, F. Oser

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780898595574
• eBook ISBN: 9781136560118
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1985. Kohlberg and his colleagues claimed that all one need do in moral education is change the stage or structure of an individual's moral reasoning, and changes in moral behavior, ego and personality style would occur. As moral education entered the 1980s, many important problems remained. The question of the legitimacy of the highest stage is still being considered. The problem of the relationship between judgment and action is receiving much attention and reformulation as well. The role of affect in moral functioning has been sorely overlooked until very recently. A further issue is the implication of the particular realm of one's life (family, school, peer group, workplace, church) for the form and effectiveness of moral education. Finally, how can self-acknowledged moral transgressions in typical individuals be incorporated into the theory? This volume reflects these problems.

I THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
AND PHILOSOPHICAL
FOUNDATIONS

1 An Interdisciplinary Approach
to Moral Education

James R. Rest

University of Minnesota

Hardly anyone opposes in principle an interdisciplinary approach to anything. Like an international conference, an interdisciplinary approach carries the presumption that people with different perspectives will enrich each other and synergistically create something more valuable and comprehensive than any one group working alone. However, my own experience with interdisciplinary meetings has often been disappointing. Participants in interdisciplinary gatherings seem to spend an inordinate amount of time disentangling each other's specialized lingo, and struggling with different fundamental starting points; and even when some product does emerge, it is often a patchwork of compromises and a clutter of inconsistent ideas.

A number of us at the University of Minnesota from different disciplines have been working together for several years now, and we hope to do better than the typical interdisciplinary team. I would like to be able to tell you that we have a proven formula for success. However, what we actually have are some ideas and proposals that seem to have been working reasonably well so far in guiding research and program development. I will describe some features of this general approach, some of the inevitable issues that need to be confronted, and some of the options we are trying.

Right at the start, the prospects for constructive interdisciplinary collaboration may be improved by two conditions: (1) If the team can agree on some practical goal towards which all are contributing; and (2) If the team can agree on some plan for dividing the work and drawing upon the special expertise of the various participants. At the University of Minnesota, our practical goal has been to prepare graduate students studying for careers in the helping professions (dentists, nurses, counseling psychologists, etc.) to deal with the inevitable moral and value dilemmas that they will face in their future jobs. We all accept this as the overriding goal towards which we are working. Each group has subgoals and special agendas that it brings to this enterprise, making this worthwhile for each member as an individual. For example, I, as a research psychologist, also see it as an opportunity for carrying out research on a particular psychological model of morality. On the other hand, professionals teaching in the particular area—such as the faculty in the dental school—see this interdisciplinary activity as contributing to the overall strength of their professional program and as maintaining professional standards. Philosophers and lawyers can see it as providing real-life case studies in applied ethics, worthy of large investments of time in analyzing the issues and proposed solutions.

As the overriding goal, I would stress the importance of preparing students to deal with the moral dilemmas encountered in their professional life. Focusing on some external condition in the real world that we all think is important has allowed us to avoid a stalemate on unsettled theoretical issues. All of us probably do not have the same set of fundamental axioms about reality or goodness or Tightness, and yet we can move ahead insofar as some activity or analysis seems to contribute towards our practical goal. Of course it is important to be constantly working towards clarifying the theoretical issues (such as the relation of applied ethics to the traditional grand theories of moral philosophy, the relation of cognition and emotion in the psychology of morality, the bounds of responsibility of professionals). Nevertheless, without final or complete answers to these questions, we are not paralyzed. It is hoped that our practical work helps our theoretical work too.

As the second condition for productive interdisciplinary collaboration, it is also important to have some agreement about a division of labor and a plan for orchestrating the contributions from the various participants. As an illustration, a plan of coordination has been evolving at the University of Minnesota, started by a colleague in the School of Dentistry, Dr. Muriel Bebeau. Dr. Bebeau involved wider circles of participants, enlisted expertise from various disciplines, and cultivated support in the School of Dentistry for a moral education program.

Dr. Bebeau asked professional dentists to describe the kinds of moral dilemmas that dentists encounter on the job. After interviewing a number of dentists, she made a list of such dilemmas. This list was sent out to hundreds of dentists as a survey, so as to identify which moral dilemmas are perceived by the professional community as the most recurrent and important ones. The responses to this survey identified the “top 10” moral dilemmas in dentistry. Dr. Bebeau then dramatized these dilemmas—like a radio drama—in the form of a scripted dialogue between a dentist and a client conversing in the dentist's office (Bebeau, Rest, Speidel, Yamoor, & Eberhardy, 1982). Over the course of the dialogue, some moral dilemmas for the dentist would be presented. School of Dentistry faculty were involved in checking these dramatized dilemmas for realism as well as on technical points. Professionals in the field agreed that the finished product was representative of the kinds of dilemmas that new students were likely to face on the job. For example, one of the dramatized dilemmas concerns a woman, Margaret Herrington, who comes into the dentist's office on her first visit, having moved from another town. In the course of the examination, we see that, although Ms. Herrington has had extensive and costly dental work by her previous dentist, the work is seriously deficient and must be redone. The drama builds to a point where the dentist in the dramatization is suggesting to Ms. Herrington that she needs to have a lot of new dental work done. Ms. Herrington is surprised at this news and begins to challenge the new dentist to tell her why this is necessary. At this point, the listener is asked to role-play the dentist in that situation to show how the situation should be handled. Students in the dental program listened to these dramatizations and were asked to respond. Some of the students were so absorbed in handling the technical aspects of the situation (e.g., Do the symptoms indicate periodontal disease? How many crowns will have to be redone? Might oral surgery be necessary?) that they missed the moral issues: Who is going to pay for redoing all this work—Ms. Herrington who has already paid once to have the job done? Who is this previous dentist and how did such inferior work occur? Does the new dentist have a responsibility to the profession to check up on this colleague? And so on.

Thus the students were confronted with these dilemmas and gave their responses. Some of these responses were tape-recorded and replayed for the School of Dentistry faculty. Faculty were amazed and flabbergasted by the ways that some of their students said they would deal with these dilemmas. Faculty heard some students say that fellow dentists should never criticize each other's work, and that, in effect, dentists had a professional responsibility to hide each other's malpractice from the public. Faculty heard some students say that the only accommodation they would make to Ms. Herrington's problem was to offer her long-term monthly payments but would still charge her the full amount. (1 should hasten to add that the School of Dentistry at the University of Minnesota has an outstanding reputation for preparing good clinicians, and that entrance into the dentistry program is highly competitive). When faculty heard how unprepared some of their students were to meet the moral dilemmas that inevitably face them on the job, the School of Dentistry made a commitment to build components of moral education into its curriculum.

So far, this story about the School of Dentistry has illustrated how an educational psychologist, Dr. Bebeau, collaborated with faculty in a professional program. Simply presenting some student responses (even without extensive test development, data analysis, or research) was a very effective demonstration to faculty that something needed to be done. Currently we are trying to implement a systematic program of curriculum development and research. To do this involves the contributions of other areas of expertise as well. For instance, the hypothetical dilemmas evoke many different proposals for solution. To claim that one solution is better than another is essentially a philosophical enterprise. So when we have a variety of proposed solutions to a dilemma, we call in colleagues with training in the “normative” disciplines (philosophy, theology, and law) to examine the adequacy of certain solutions and arguments, and to identify the critical features of the “better” in contrast to the less adequate, solutions. The philosophers are not asked to give us a short historical essay on how Aristotle or Kant might respond to the problem, but are asked to help build a taxonomy for scoring responses to these dilemmas and to present arguments for the greater adequacy to some responses.

The description so far includes the professionals in the field (e.g., faculty in the School of Dentistry), colleagues from the normative disciplines (philosophy, theology, law), and psychology. However, I have much more to say about the role psychology has to play, since I am a psychologist. And so for the remainder of this paper I will emphasize the psychological contribution to an interdisciplinary project.

In very general terms, I see four basic contributions of the psychologist to an interdisciplinary team: first, to use existing psychological theory and research to characterize the variables and processes that are most likely involved in the production of moral behavior; second, to draw upon psychology's many techniques and research strategies for collecting information in order to characterize what the students initially are like, and to monitor the process and outcomes of intervention; third, to devise models of the psychological processes which “experts” intuitively use in moral decision making and which distinguish them from the less expert; and fourth, to clarify the mechanisms and conditions of change so that we can help “novices” function more like the “experts.”

While I cannot claim to have complete or final answers to any of these issues, I do have some proposals and some research that I'd like to discuss now (for more extensive discussions, see Rest, 1983a and, in press). First, I have a particular view about what existing psychological theory and research has to tell us about the variables and processes that are involved in the production of moral behavior. I propose that existing psychological research supports the view that the production of moral behavior involves four major component processes. This four-component model arises from a review of the morality literature for the Mussen Handbook (Rest, 1983b). The four major processes as indicated in Table 1.1 are: (1) interpreting the situation in terms of recognizing what actions are possible for the actor and how each course of action affects all the parties involved; (2) figuring out what one ought to do—applying moral ideals to the situation to determine the moral course of action; (3) choosing among moral and non-moral values to decide what one actually intends to do; and (4) implementing what one intends to do.

Note that I am denying that moral behavior is produced by a single, unitary process such as stages of moral reasoning, or empathy, or reinforcement contingencies. I think one-variable theories of morality are untenable. Two people who are similar on one process (e.g., moral reasoning) need not be similar on

TABLE 1.1
Major Component Processes in the Production of Moral Behavior

Component I

Major functions of the process: To interpret the situation in terms of how one's actions affect the welfare of others.

Exemplary research: (Response to emergencies) Staub (1978, 1979); Schwartz (1977); (Social cognition development) Shantz (1983); Selman (1980); (Empathy) Hoffman (1977, in press).

Cognitive-affective interaction: Drawing inferences about how the other will be affected, and feeling empathy, disgust, etc. for the other.

Component II

Major functions: To formulate what a moral course of action would be; to identify the moral ideal in a specific situation.

Exemplary research: (Cognitive developmental) Piaget (1932/1965); Kohlberg (1969, 1976); DIT research (Rest, 1979); Damon (1977); (Social psychology “norms”) Berkowitz & Daniels (1963); Schwartz (1977); (Post-Piagetian) Keasey (1978).

Cognitive-affective interaction: Both abstract and attitudinal-valuing aspects are involved in the construction of systems of moral meaning; moral ideals are comprised of both cognitive and affective elements.

Component III

Major functions: To select among competing value outcomes of ideals, the one to act upon; deciding whether or not to try to fulfill one's moral ideal.

Exemplary research: (Decision-making models, and factors which affect decision-making) Pomazal & Jaccord (1976); Lerner (1971); Schwartz (1977); Isen et al., (1978); (Theories of moral motivation) Wilson (1975); Aronfreed (1968); Bandura (1977b); Kohlberg (1969); Hoffman (in press); Durkheim (1961); Rawls (1971).

Cognitive-affective interactions: Calculation of relative utilities of various goals; mood influencing outlook; defensive distortion of perception; empathy impelling decisions; social understanding motivating the choice of goals.

Component IV

Major functions: To execute and implement what one intends to do.

Exemplary research: (Ego strength and self regulation) Mischel and Mischel (1976); Krebs (1967); Staub (1979).

Cognitive-affective interaction: Task persistence as affected by cognitive transformation of the goal.

other processes (e.g., moral sensitivity or moral motivation). A person who performs one process with great facility need not have great facility in other processes. Although one process might interact and influence another process, the processes ought to be distinguished from each other as performing different functions, all of which are necessary for the production of moral behavior. Deficiency in any process can result in moral failure. Therefore, it follows that moral education should be aimed at improvin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• PART I: THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES AND PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS
• PART II: APPLICATIONS AND INTERVENTIONS A. THE FAMILY
• B. THE SCHOOL
• C. THE WORKPLACE AND PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
• D. CLINICAL SETTINGS
• PART III: CRITIQUES AND REVISIONS
• Author Index
• Subject Index