Moral Education and Lifelong Learning: Wisdom as a Developmental Ideal

Moral education is a field with both formal and informal settings and approaches to cultivating, developing, and socializing the moral and ethical dimensions of being human. There is a rich debate occurring about what life-long learning in moral education is meant to produce. I argue that wisdom, as traditionally understood in the wisdom traditions, is a far more expansive and holistic conceptualization than those definitions on offer in the current psychological and social scientific literature on the subject. Traditionally understood, wisdom can help liberate us from the often too narrow constraints of current thinking, enabling an integrative and holistic approach more worthy of social science. Wisdom should be the developmental ideal of life-long learning in the moral and ethical domain

A Moral Experience Feedback Loop: Modeling a system of moral self-cultivation in everyday life

This systems thinking model illustrates a common feedback loop by which people engage the moral world and continually reshape their moral sensibility. The model highlights seven processes that collectively form this feedback loop: beginning with (1) one’s current moral sensibility which shapes processes of (2) perception, (3) deliberation, (4) decision-making, (5) embodying action, (6) reflection on self-evaluation and other’s responses, and (7) consolidation into one’s moral sensibility of the lessons learned. Improvements on previous models of moral engagement include (1) recognizing moral sensibility as the grounding for moral engagement, (2) articulating a systems approach and (3) illustrating a feedback loop that brings the moral protagonist full-circle leaving her with a slightly changed moral sensibility with which to engage the next moral context

Complexity-thinking and social science: Self-organization involving human consciousness

Complexity-thinking refers to a cluster of concepts popularized in several branches of science, primarily in the physical sciences but increasingly in the social sciences. There is reason to be cautious regarding how the concepts are used across disciplines and branches of science. This paper discusses self-organization in dynamic systems, tracing its roots in social science and critiquing current usage of the term with regard to systems involving consciousness - humans and groups of humans. A brief sketch of the levels of complexity sets the groundwork for understanding the critique of self-organization to follow. I argue that consciousness fundamentally changes the terms of discussion in self-organization by adding a self/selves that is not equivalent to the system as a whole, but which directly influences what is organized, how, and toward what end. Self-organization in complex adaptive systems involving consciousness should be distinguished as self-cultivating self-organization and self-presenting self-organization

What develops in moral development? A model of moral sensibility

The field of moral psychology would benefit from an integrative model of what develops in moral development, contextualized within the larger scope of social science research. Moral sensibility is proposed as the best concept to embody stated aims, but the content of this concept must be more finely articulated and conceptualized as a dynamic system. Moral sensibility is defined here as a developing dynamic interaction of (1) a host of developing capacities for morally relevant knowing (e.g. moral reasoning, self-awareness and means to other-awareness—compassionate caring, empathy, perspective taking); (2) one’s socio-cultural moral assumptions and expressions; (3) one’s idiodynamic ideology (the developing set of consciously chosen values and value-laden understandings gleaned from experiencing one’s unique life history); (4) one’s morally relevant identities and self-understandings; (5) all embodied in one’s moral being in-the-moment, the ability to enact one’s moral sensibility in each new instance of moral engagement

Bottom-up morality: The basis of human morality in our primate nature

This is an interview with Frans de Waal who gave the Kohlberg Memorial Lecture at the AME Conference in St. Louis in November 2017. Frans de Waal’s research with non-human primates documents that primates share our tendencies towards fairness, reciprocity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, caring for others, strategies for conflict avoidance and for conflict resolution and repairing the social fabric. Findings show that primates, especially our nearest relatives, Chimpanzee and Bonobo, intentionally shape their communal interactions, often to the benefit of the whole community. Humans share this evolved primate nature, grounded in mammalian biology of maternal instinct and infant attachment. These provide the deep basis of human morality, which is marked by its own extensions, such as inter-personal moral discourse and consensus, detailed public justifications and philosophical critique, abstraction and universalization. The evolutionary view promotes a bottom-up morality which needs to be fully considered when discussing moral development, moral engagement and moral education

Evidence of the Value of the Smoking Media Literacy Framework for Middle School Students

BACKGROUND Susceptibility to future smoking, positive beliefs about smoking, and perceptions of antismoking norms are all factors that are associated with future smoking. In previous research, smoking media literacy (SML) has been associated with these variables, even when controlling for other known risk factors for smoking. However, these studies were performed with older teenagers, often in high school, not younger teens at a crucial developmental point with respect to the decision to begin smoking. METHODS This study uses survey data collected from 656 American public middle school students representing multiple zip codes, schools, and school districts. RESULTS Smoking media literacy levels for middle school students were similar to those of high school students in earlier studies. Higher SML levels were associated with lower susceptibility to future smoking and predicted susceptibility to smoke when controlling for other risk factors. This suggests that the same relationships found with teenagers may exist with middle school students. CONCLUSIONS Although follow-up studies using larger and more controlled administrations of the SML scale are warranted, this study suggests the utility of the SML framework and scale in the development and investigation of media literacy as a prevention strategy in students this age