College Experience And Moral Judgment Development

Moral development is a powerful task of young adulthood, and attending to that development is a mandate expected of institutions of higher education. Liddell and Cooper offer a practical approach to understanding how moral learning occurs as well as the role of mentors and educators in facilitating that learning. Using Rest's Four Component Model--moral sensitivity, judgement, motivation, and action--they describe powerful campus initiatives for moral growth, including service learning, civic engagement, campus judicial systems, diversity and social justice initiatives, and sustainability efforts. Guidelines for effective moral mentorship are examined, and assessment approaches are described in detail. This is the 139thvolume of this Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly series. An indispensable resource for vice presidents of student affairs, deans of students, student counselors, and other student services professionals, New Directions for Student Services offers guidelines and programs for aiding students in their total development: emotional, social, physical, and intellectual.

Every year in this country, some 10,000 college and university courses are taught in applied ethics. And many professional organizations now have their own codes of ethics. Yet social science has had little impact upon applied ethics. This book promises to change that trend by illustrating how social science can make a contribution to applied ethics. The text reports psychological studies relevant to applied ethics for many professionals, including accountants, college students and teachers, counselors, dentists, doctors, journalists, nurses, school teachers, athletes, and veterinarians. Each chapter begins with the research base of the cognitive-developmental approach--especially linked to Kohlberg and Rest's Defining Issues Test. Finally, the book summarizes recent research on the following issues: * moral judgment scores within and between professions, * pre- and post-test evaluations of ethics education programs, * moral judgment and moral behavior, * models of professional ethics education, and * models for developing new assessment tools. Researchers in different professional fields investigate different questions, develop different research strategies, and report different findings. Typically researchers of one professional field are not aware of research in other fields. An important aim of the present book is to bring this diverse research together so that cross-fertilization can occur and ideas from one field can transfer to another.

This study addresses a growing concern of academic dishonesty in higher education based on the theory that an increase in moral development may lead to an increase in moral behavior. Students' moral development and its relationship with student characteristics, co-curricular college experiences, and students' level of involvement (degree of commitment) in those experiences were examined. Three research questions were posited: (1) What is the relationship between student background characteristics (sex, academic level, and age) and students moral development? (2) What is the nature of the relationship between undergraduate involvement in co-curricular experiences (student government association, Greek life, Greek life leadership, structured internship, and faculty mentored research) and moral development? (3) What is the nature of the relationship between the level of involvement in co-curricular college experiences and moral development? Data were analyzed from a convenience sample of college students gathered through an on-line electronic survey. Moral development was measured by the moral judgment score (N2 index) obtained through participant responses to the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT-2) (Rest, Narvaez, Bebeau, & Thoma, 1999). The relationship between the independent variables and moral development was measured using independent samples t-tests, between-subject Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and general linear modeling. Two statistically significant findings were uncovered. Students who reported participation on a faculty mentored research project had higher levels of moral development (N2 index) than students who did not participate in this experience (p = .03); and sex showed statistically significant differences between males and females and moral development (N2 index) (p = .04). The findings suggest the need for more support of faculty members and their research projects to encourage student researchers. Evidence from this study shows college involvement through faculty member engagement plays a critical role in students' moral development and lays the groundwork for further investigation of factors that may influence this relationship.