Abstract
To contribute to society, most individuals move beyond an exclusive preoccupation with moral conduct and character to consider how institutional practices facilitate or undermine moral functioning. Schools can contribute to this development by helping young people expand their knowledge of personalities and by fostering a greater awareness of how societal institutions influence thoughts, feelings, and actions. In schools, students are able to interact with people whose families differ from their own, and they are exposed to new group norms and institutional practices. Schools are primarily responsible for helping young people learn to read, write, and compute, but many educators also intentionally accept responsibility for nurturing wisdom and fairness (e.g., Battistich, Solomon, Kim, Watson, & Schaps, 1995).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aronfreed, J. (1968). Conduct and conscience: The socialization of internalized control over behavior. New York: Academic Press.
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193–209.
Battistich, V., Solomon, D., Kim, D., Watson, M., & Schaps, E. (1995). Schools as communities, poverty levels of student populations, and students’ attitudes, motives, and performance: A multilevel analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 627–658.
Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral development. Monographs for the Society for Research in Child Development, 48, 1–96.
Hart, D., & Fegley, S. (1995). Prosocial behavior and caring in adolescence: Relations to self-understanding and social judgment. Child Development, 66, 1346–1359.
Nicholls, J. G. (1989). The competitive ethos and democratic education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Nicholls, J. G., Nelson, J. R., & Gleaves, K. (1995). Learning “facts” versus learning that most questions have many answers: Student evaluations of contrasting curricula. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 253–260.
Nicholls, J. G., & Thorkildsen, T. A. (1989). Intellectual conventions verses matters of substance: Elementary school students as curriculum theorists. American Educational Research Journal, 26, 533–544.
Peebles, M. (1995). Social alienation in the junior high school: Five case studies. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1995). Dissertation Abstracts International, 56–06, A2194.
Thorkildsen, T. A. (2000). Children’s coordination of procedural and commutative justice in school. In W. van Haaften, T. Wren, & A. Tellings (Eds.), Moral sensibilities and education II: The schoolchild (pp. 61–88 ). Bemmel, The Netherlands: Concorde Publishing House.
Thorkildsen, T. A., & Jordan, C. (1995). Is there a right way to collaborate? When the experts speak can the customers be right? In J. G. Nicholls & T. A. Thorkildsen (Eds.), Reasons for learning: Expanding the conversation on student-teacher collaboration (pp. 137–161 ). New York: Teachers College Press.
Thorkildsen, T. A., & Nicholls, J. G. (with Bates, A., Brankis, N., & DeBolt, T.). (2002). Motivation and the struggle to learn: Responding to fractured experience. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Thorkildsen, T. A., Sodonis, A., & White-McNulty, L. (2004). Epistemology and adolescents’ conceptions of procedural justice in school. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Thorkildsen, T. A., & Weaver, A. (2003). Developing conceptions of the role of school in society: Prioritizing learning, test, and contest situations. Presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa, FL.
Turiel, E. (1998). The development of morality. In N. Eisenberg & W. Damon (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development ( 5th ed., pp. 863–932 ). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2004 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Thorkildsen, T.A. (2004). Moral Functioning in School. In: Thorkildsen, T.A., Walberg, H.J. (eds) Nurturing Morality. Issues in Children’s and Families’ Lives, vol 5. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4163-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4163-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3454-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4163-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive