ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a view of moral education as an integral part of education for democracy. Drawing on a co-constructivist perspective, the chapter argues the importance of the institutionalization of modes of critical thinking and discussion for the historical emergence of social such institutions as modern science, modern political democracy, and modern education, namely, institutions that represent the embodiment of the democratic ideal. In this frame, the focus of the applied research described in this chapter was on developing educational intervention aimed at facilitating the use or practice of modes of critical cognitive and communicative competence.
This chapter describes moral education from the perspective of psychosocial theory. The central theoretical claims of this perspective have been outlined in Volume 1 of this Handbook (Kurtines, Mayock, Carlo, Pollard & Lanza, 1991). In Volume 1 we argued that psychosocial theory provides an alternative to the traditions that have defined the theoretical literature. In this chapter we argue that such perspective also provides an alternative to the traditions that have defined the literature on moral education. That is, the view of moral education presented here provides an alternative to the predominant view, viz., that of moral development as the primary goal or aim of moral education. The perspective described here, in contrast, views moral development as a goal of moral education, but not the only goal. From such a perspective, moral education is viewed as part of the broader process of education for democracy, which necessarily encompasses 290education for a full range of competencies: linguistic, cognitive, communicative and sociomoral.
A view of moral education as part of the larger process of education for democracy is necessary, we argue, because of the social evolutionary changes that have taken place in the modern world over the past several centuries in general, and the historical emergence of democratic social institutions in particular. Democratic social institutions have played a significant role in freeing social evolution from the constraints of history, culture, and condition. The increasing institutionalization of a value on the democratic ideal, we claim, has a significant liberating potential for the social evolutionary history of the species.
The first part of the chapter briefly outlines our view of moral education as education for democracy; the second part presents an overview of our exploratory and ongoing work in area of education for democracy.
