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Developing a Moral Compass: Experiences, Dialogues, and Reflections in Parochial Schools
Abstract
This qualitative study explored moral experiences from a phenomenological perspective using personal interviews and oral history narratives gathered from adult participants. The research focused on former parochial school students’ perspectives of their moral experiences as children in Catholic parochial schools of the 1950s and 1960s. Data collection utilized interviews. The purpose of the study is to seek a deep understanding and describe moral experiences, from adult perspectives, in developing virtue-oriented behavior. Participants were adult volunteers, age fifty-five to seventy-five years old, who had attended Catholic parochial schools. Emergent themes were aggregated from the personal interviews. The results of the study denote that participants’ perceptions supported literature on some of the concepts of an educative experience and other learning theories. All participants expressed that their moral experiences, whether negative or positive, were influential in the development of virtue-oriented behavior. The most common theme derived from narrative transcripts of the interviews was how participants felt their moral teachings from the nuns and priests became fundamental to their lives. An unexpected result was the feeling of thankfulness or gratitude that participants felt for their moral education and to the parents and religious teachers, though they articulated many moral challenges in their recollections.
... The increasing number of homosexuals shows their existence in Indonesia [1] [8]. Until now, homosexuality has often become a contradictory issue in society, debates that have arisen regarding homosexuality are related to the factors causing it and how a group of people reacts to it. ...
This study was aimed to develop a group guidance model in order to prevent the potential threat of homosexuality in university. Homosexual behavior has occurred in the wider community. The perpetrators openly show their existence to the world in various ways and it is as if they ask for the world's recognition of the existence of their people. This phenomenon is a threat to the younger generation. The rise of homosexual cases today in universities has become one of the problems for counseling lecturers and it is necessary to find alternative solutions so that the potential threat of homosexuality can be prevented. This study used the R&D method with the ADDIE approach (analyze, design, develop, implementation and evaluation) . Based on the findings in the field, it is known that the validity of the research product has an average value of 0.80 valid. The model book has an average score of 0.817 and is classified as valid. Students' book has an average score of 0.796 and is classified as valid. Students' book has an average score of 0.794 and is classified as valid. The practicality of the research product has an average score of 4.2 and is classified as very practical. The model book has an average score of 4.20 and is classified as very practical. The lecturers' book has an average score of 4.21 and is classified as very practical. The student's book has an average score of 4.20 and is classified as very practical.
An overview of the many types of studies that fall into the qualitative design genre is provided. Strategies that qualitative researchers use to establish the authors' studies as credible and trustworthy are listed and defined. So that readers will recognize the important contribution qualitative studies have made in the field of special education, a range of well-known and lesser known examples of qualitative research are reviewed. The quality indicators that are important in conducting and evaluating qualitative research are identified. Finally, as an example of the evidence that can be produced using qualitative methods, the authors provide a summary of how 3 studies have provided important information that can be used to inform policy and practice.
The article surveys some of the more potent aspects of the moral dimension of educational institutions, with particular reference to their hidden curriculum of moral formation, the place of passion in teaching, and the many elements that are required for a balanced and realistic moral education. It concludes with some comments on commodification and respect in education.
Moral educators have little to learn from the moral theories in which philosophers routinely trade. These theories — including those by Slote, Hume, and Kant — leave behind the concrete world in which the moral educator labors. As interesting as they may be, they merely devise alternative routes to the same destination — to the main general features of morality as we know it. It is not so much these general features but the particular forms of moral life under which children and their tutors live that give specificity to duties and rights, content to virtues, and shape to purpose. To navigate successfully through this stuff of moral life, the developing youth needs not only a good heart but a casuistical temper.
Editor’s note: While JRCE primarily focuses on Christian education within the Protestant tradition, this article documents some challenges faced by American Catholic schools over the years. These problems are shared across denominational lines. Other Christian schools are also susceptible to similar demographic and economic challenges. Schools and systems must learn to grapple with financial scarcity. They must decide how to respond, whether to market their schools to nonbelievers, to seek government funding, or to walk another pathway. Throughout these challenges, the concern about maintaining the core identity of any Christian school is ever present and leaders of such schools must be constantly vigilant as they search for sound solutions to the problems they face. This article shares lessons learned by our Catholic colleagues. This article presents a historical overview of Catholic schooling in the United States from colonial times to the present. Presented in order of eras in American history, the growth of Catholic schools and the challenges they faced are documented. The author concludes with a discussion of contemporary trends, realities challenges, and opportunities facing Catholic educators.
This article reports two studies‐‐a longitudinal investigation of moral judgement and reported moral experience, and an outcome study on the impact of a moral intervention project with adult undergraduate students. In the first study, 29 middle‐class, primarily white, well‐educated adults, ranging in age from 18 to 80 were administered Standard Form Moral Judgment interviews 4 years apart and were asked to describe their own moral events that had occurred. The average moral judgement score on the hypothetical dilemmas was Stage Four. The reasoning in the spontaneously reported moral events was significantly lower, although the two scores were highly correlated. Difference scores between the two were not related to dilemma scores. While there were no significant gender differences in scores on the hypothetical dilemmas, there were in scores on spontaneous‐reported events favouring males. The ethical quality of the reported events could be easily categorised by traditional moral‐philosophic categories. About half the events contained traditional deontic moral content (moral right); the other half contained material defined as the moral good. The context of most events was interpersonal, as opposed to societal. The second study investigated the reported impact on mostly white, middle‐and upper‐class undergraduate students who participated in a mentor programme in an inner‐city high school, a programme designed to impact both moral thinking and moral sentiments (motivation). Thirty‐nine adults, ranging in age from 20 to 57 participated, of which 26 were female and 13 were male. In both short‐ and long‐term follow‐up surveys, most participants reported major changes in their thinking about and motivation to address social justice issues.
Many school districts have implemented "packaged" programs designed to teach character education. Millions of dollars have been spent on these programs, yet society continues to produce more "characters" than students "with character." This article describes a shift from the "programmatic" mindset to a solution that is not packaged or purchased. The use of children's literature to teach skills throughout the curriculum is a widely accepted practice. Through the years, fairy tales have strengthened the attitudes of readers toward life, toward human relationships, and toward moral standards. The author proposes that these beloved tales could be used as a method of teaching character education.
Whereas a consensus used to exist that universities had the responsibility to make students more fully human, today one finds scholars claiming that universities should form only certain aspects of a student’s identity or should draw primarily from only certain aspects. In other words, scholars support the claim that the university should or should not undertake a certain kind of moral education by appealing to a particular aspect of human or institutional identity. In this paper, we survey two such arguments regarding moral education in the university as well as a third option that leaves open the possibility of an approach to moral education grounded in a specific kind of humanism. The paper then evaluates these arguments and contends that the vision for moral education with a pluralistic humanistic vision provides the best vision for moral enquiry and formation in higher education.
The crucial epistemological question for formulating the principles that underlie moral education concerns the status of rationality and objectivity in ethics and education. In this essay Katariina Holma argues that the intertwined understanding of the concepts of education, ethics, rationality, and objectivity is built into our language and our thinking. She begins by delineating epistemologically adequate interpretations for the notions of rationality and objectivity. In light of these interpretations, Holma contends that the two main contemporary philosophical arguments against the possibility of ethical objectivity — the argument that derives from cultural relativism and the argument that derives from the scientific worldview — fail to refute this possibility. The epistemological notions of rationality and objectivity, as Holma interprets them in this essay, prepare the way for a moral education that combines the appreciation of personal and cultural plurality with the possibility for critical thinking and the pursuit of better understanding in the ethical realm.
Questions of identity such as ‘Who am I?’ are often answered by appeals to one or more affiliations with a specific nation (citizenship), culture, ethnicity, religion, etc. Taking as given the idea that identity over time—including identification and re-identification—for objects of a particular kind requires that there be criteria of identity appropriate to things of that kind, I argue that citizenship, as a ‘collectivist’ concept, does not generate such criteria for individual citizens, but that the concept person—which specifies the kind of entity that I am—does generate such criteria. Confusion on this point has led some writers on citizenship to equivocate between identity for individuals and what is properly called self-determination in terms of their group affiliations and commitments. In the second part of the paper, I articulate and defend a relational view of personhood, and argue that it provides adequate grounding for morality in general, and moral education in particular. While not denying the value of civics or citizenship education, the link between morality and citizenship is derivative, at best. Finally, I examine the implications of a relational conception of personhood for the specific context of schools and classrooms, arguing that this conception is appropriately represented when the classroom functions as a community of inquiry, in which each member is encouraged to see her/himself as one among others. Drawing on the theory and practice of Philosophy for Children, I conclude with a call to reunite citizenship and moral education with their philosophical roots.
Themes in the papers in this special issue of the JRA on moral development are identified. We discuss the intersection of moral development research with policy concerns, the distinctive qualities of moral life in adolescence that warrant investigation, the multiple connotations of "moral," the methods typical of moral development research, and the influences that shape adolescent moral development. Suggestions are made for new methods and new directions in the study of moral development. Moral development in adolescence has reached maturity as an area of research. This essay introduces a special issue of the Journal of Research on Adolescence, which collects some of the very best investigations on adolescent moral development. Expansive reviews of the large literature will also appear in the Handbook of Moral Development (Killen & Smetana, in press), the Handbook of Child Development (Damon, in press), and in the most recent volume in the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation series (Carlo & Edwards, in press). Moreover, there are hundreds of research papers related to moral development in adolescence appearing each year, many of which escape synthesis in the various reviews and collections just mentioned.