FOSTERING GOODNESS
A Teachers’ Guide to Promoting Adolescent Moral Development
Why is adolescent moral development important?
What is adolescent moral development?
Adolescence refers to the transition from childhood to adulthood. This transition begins when an individual enters puberty, and it ends when an individual turns 18 years old. Thus, adolescence spans across middle school and high school. Similarly, an adolescent is an individual who is in this age group.
Morality encompasses issues concerning how people should treat each other based on broad, universal principles such as justice and care.
Moral development is the process through which moral reasoning and behavior emerge, change, and persist as individuals grow older.
Promoting adolescent moral development involves fostering lifelong habits of thinking and behaving morally. In other words, we hope to teach young people to “understand, care about, and act upon ethical values” (Lickona, 1991, p. 32). Moreover, we want moral thinking and behavior to become an important aspect of the young person’s personality so they will persist throughout adulthood. This effort involves three main goals:
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Encourage adolescents to feel concerned for others. Adolescents must be able to take others’ perspectives (mentally understand another person’s view; Selman, 1980), feel empathy (emotionally experience what they think others feel; Hoffman, 2000), and tolerate all kinds of people (to respect, embrace, and care about people who are different than themselves; Hernandez, 1993).
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Help adolescents to recognize their own role in influencing other people’s well-being. Adolescents must take personal responsibility for acting in ways that demonstrate their concern for others (Blasi, 1983).
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Help adolescents build pathways for moral behavior. To take action, adolescents must believe in their own ability to make a difference (Bandura, 1977b; Caprara & Steca, 2005), be able to control their impulses (Kochanska, Murray, & Coy, 1997) and to express their feelings to others (Eisenberg, 2000), and build connections with people who can give them opportunities for helping (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009).
Teachers could have a particularly strong influence on adolescents’ moral development because they interact with them on a daily basis across months or years, have personal relationships with them, monitor their social interactions, and guide many of their focused activities. Furthermore, teachers interact with a large number of adolescents (Eccles & Roeser, 1999). Therefore, teachers have an opportunity to make a significant impact on the moral goodness of our society.
Click on the tabs above to view general tips, specific activities, and additional resources that teachers can use to promote moral development among their students.
How can we promote adolescent moral development?
Moral development is important because it determines how much people will be kind, caring, cooperative, and compassionate. These qualities contribute to the individual’s sense of well-being, facilitate closer and more supportive relationships among individuals, and promotes the healthy functioning of societies.
Promoting moral development is particularly important during adolescence because this is a time when individuals become capable of thinking about “big picture” issues such as who they are, what is most important to them, and their role in the world (Piaget, 1977). This is also when individuals are exposed to many different contexts (e.g. school, home, workplaces, sports teams, clubs, and peer groups), worldviews that vary from their family’s views, and opportunities to try out different roles. As a result, adolescents tend to be especially focused on identifying aspects of themselves that are consistent across situations (Erikson, 1968). Furthermore, the habits and worldviews that individuals develop during adolescents often persist into adulthood. Once individuals become adults, their ways of thinking and behaving tend to be much more stable. Therefore, encouraging moral development among adolescents could have a significant, long-lasting influence on their lifelong behavior.
Updated 2015
The purpose of this website is to provide research-based advice on what teachers can do to promote moral development among middle and high school students.
