A Review of Early 21St Century Developments

MORAL EDUCATION in ELITE UNIVERSITY EDUCATION SCHOOLS A Review of Early 21st Century Developments MORAL EDUCATION IN ELITE UNIVERSITY EDUCATION SCHOOLS A Review of Early 21st Century Developments A Note to the Reader Among its many interests, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture is deeply curious about the nature of moral formation among the young. It has, to that end, launched a number of inquiries surrounding this topic. As a matter of ongoing practice, the Institute operates from the assumption that to know a subject well, one must understand the discourse that surrounds that subject. The report that follows is a preliminary historical examination of the normative discourse that dominates elite graduate schools of education in America. We offer this to friends and supporters of the Institute to keep them apprised of our work. As a preliminary foray into this subject, we ask that neither this document nor any part of it be cited without permission of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Moral Education in Elite University Education Schools: A Review of Early 21st Century Developments COPYRIGHT © 2014 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be cited, sold, reproduced, printed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Printed in the United States of America. To obtain additional copies of this report, contact: Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture University of Virginia P.O. Box 400816 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4816 (434) 924-7705 www.iasc-culture.org [email protected] 2 Table of Contents I. Introduction • 4 II. Moral Formation as Cognitive and Emotional Development • 6 Moral Formation as Cognitive and Emotional Development • 7 Moral Education as Technique • 10 Spirituality and Religion • 13 III. Moral Education • 17 Alternative Views in Moral Education • 27 IV. Social Justice • 32 Social Justice Pedagogy • 44 V. Citizenship • 49 Justice • 50 Pluralism • 53 Development • 60 The Harvard Civic and Moral Education Initiative • 65 VI. Conclusion • 73 VII. Bibliography • 75 3 I. Introduction The eminent educational philosopher Nel Noddings recently rearticulated a key distinction made over a century ago by John Dewey, which provides a helpful framework for thinking about how elite university education schools address moral education today. The Lee L. Jacks Professor of Child Education Emerita at Stanford University, Noddings remains one of the leading voices on moral education. Dewey, she says, “reminded us that there are two meanings of moral education. By one, we refer to an educational effort to produce moral people. By the other, we refer to a program of education that is itself morally defensible.”1 To the extent that university education schools today are concerned with moral education, they are overwhelmingly focused on the latter meaning of the term. A rhetoric of social justice, which has permeated education schools since the mid-1990s, describes and drives such efforts at what these schools believe to be a moral system of K–12 schooling. By contrast, education schools pay limited attention to the former meaning of moral education—producing moral people. There is very little discussion of character in elite education schools today. Moral education fares a bit better, with some education schools offering a course on the topic for graduate students. Citizenship education is more popular, but still fairly marginal in most institutions. The most frequent place where education schools discuss forming moral children is in educational psychology courses—whether the introductory core course that all prospec- tive teachers must take, upper-level undergraduate courses, or graduate courses on topics such as adolescence, child development, or social and personality development. This report surveys the landscape of elite university education schools’ activities in the field of moral education. Section II, Moral Formation as Cognitive and Emotional Development, examines the implicit and 4 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture explicit messages about moral education found in educational psychology textbooks. Section III, Moral Education, describes the approach of vari- ous courses on that subject and the thought of the professors who teach them. Section IV, Social Justice, traces the rise of the dominant social justice rhetoric and provides a critical analysis of how it shapes beliefs about moral education. Finally, Section V, Citizenship, explores the ideas of elite education professors on that subject, including a discussion of the influence of the frameworks featured in Sections II–IV. The report is based on a study of eight university education schools generally recognized to stand in the first rank of such institutions: The University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Education; Teachers College at Columbia University; the Harvard Graduate School of Education; the Michigan State University College of Education; the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education; the Stanford Graduate School of Education; Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University; and the University of Wisconsin– Madison School of Education. Michigan State, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin offer undergraduate degrees in education with teacher certification. The other five schools certify teachers primarily at the graduate level. All eight institutions offer research-based graduate degrees in fields such as educational psychology, curriculum and instruction, and leadership, policy, and administration. This project has examined faculty biographies and publications, degree requirements, courses, syllabi, and assigned texts for each of these schools. A list of works studied for each section of this report can be found in Section VII, Bibliography. 5 II. Moral Formation as Cognitive and Emotional Development In her 1989 textbook Educational Psychology, Anita Woolfolk encapsu- lated that field’s predominant understanding of moral formation: “The development of moral reasoning can be seen in relation to both cognitive and emotional development. Empathy and formal operations in particular play large roles in a progression through [Lawrence] Kohlberg’s stages and levels. As we have seen, abstract thinking becomes increasingly important in higher stages, as children move from decisions based on absolute (though in some cases fairly abstract) rules to decisions based on principles such as justice and mercy. The abilities to see another’s perspec- tive and to imagine alternative bases for laws and rules also enter into judgments at the higher stages.”2 Now in its 12th edition as of 2012, Woolfolk’s textbook is a mainstay in introductory undergraduate education courses. Our analysis of the textbooks assigned for the whole range of undergraduate and graduate educational psychology courses in elite university education schools finds a remarkable consensus about moral education, which Woolfolk exemplifies: a primary emphasis on moral formation as cognitive and emotional development. On this view, morality develops in and from the individual person. Such approaches ignore the concept of character, because they focus on the psycho-social structures of the person. Although newer editions of textbooks like Woolfolk’s discuss cultural diversity and biological/neurological complexity (topics that early editions did not address), the primary paradigm for moral development centers on the individual’s cognitive and emotional growth, exemplified in psychological theories such as constructivism. The impact of constructivism on moral thinking in educational psychology is significant. According to Dale Schunk’s textbook on learning theories, “constructivism is a psychological and philosophical perspec- tive contending that individuals form or construct much of what they learn and understand.” This theory places “great emphasis on learners’ 6 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture information processing as a central cause of learning” and downplays the influence of culture or environment.3 Psychologists advance educational practices built upon these ideas. One such pedagogy centers on a cognitive state they call disequilibrium, a concept developed to help explain why individuals are motivated to learn. According to Woolfolk, “If the scheme [of understanding a particular event or situation] does not produce a sat- isfying result, then disequilibrium exists, we become uncomfortable. This motivates us to keep searching for a solution through assimilation and accommodation, and thus our thinking moves ahead.”4 This pedagogy places high importance on educators assessing the child’s inner mental states as the key pathway to cultivating the student’s innate ability to learn. For the constructivist, “teachers should not teach in the traditional sense of delivering instruction to a group of students. Rather, they should structure situations such that learners become actively involved with con- tent through manipulation of materials and social interaction.”5 On this view, the student constructs the knowledge. The implication for moral formation is that morality is not taught didactically. Instead, the child constructs moral knowledge internally—a difference that has real peda- gogical and cultural implications. Moral Formation as Cognitive and Emotional Development A fundamental tenet of developmental psychology

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