The integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching

Citation

Begley, P.T. (2007), "The integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 45 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea.2007.07445daa.001

The integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching

This special issue is the culmination of a research and development project which has spanned three years and involved scholars of educational leadership from four countries. During 2005-2006 the Willower Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethics, a University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Program Center based at the Pennsylvania State University, adopted as a strategic priority the development and dissemination of moral literacy resources to be used in support of educational processes. During that first year the emphasis was placed on developing resources for the K-12 sectors. As a result of that initiative a number of excellent resources were produced and are now accessible on the center website (www.ed.psu.edu/UCEACSLE/). For 2006-2007 the priority of the center remains on moral literacy but with a shift of focus from the K-12 sector to teaching in higher education settings. The objective is to promote the integration of values and ethics content and processes into college and university level teaching.

This project has yielded a number of products and events during 2006-2007. These include the collection and development of graduate course syllabi to be used as resources and exemplars. Copies of these value-added syllabi are available by contacting either the editor of this special issue or any of the authors of the articles. The plan calls for also making them available in coming months as downloadable resources on the center website referenced above. A second category of activity related to this moral literacy initiative involved a series of panel sessions and symposia devoted to this subject delivered at several conferences, including: the 11th Annual Values and Leadership Conference, Victoria, British Coloumbia, during October 2006; the Annual meeting of the UCEA in San Antonio, Texas in November 2006; and the Hawaii International Education Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii in January 2007. A number of excellent papers were produced for these conferences and they, combined with several additional pieces focusing on the K-12 sectors, became the launching point for the articles that comprise this special issue of the Journal of Educational Administration.

The lead article for this special issue is by Nancy Tuana, Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Rock Ethics Institute. Her article provides an introduction to moral literacy as a concept and an overview of the fundamental elements of moral literacy. According to Tuana, moral literacy involves three basic components: ethics sensitivity, ethical reasoning skills, and moral imagination. She further argues that teaching students about moral literacy is truly necessary if schools wish to produce productive and responsible citizens.

The second article presents an international perspective on leadership and moral literacy. Allan Walker and his colleagues Qian Haiyan and Chen Shuangye from the Chinese University of Hong Kong explore what developing moral literacy for leaders in intercultural schools will mean. The authors argue that developing moral literacy in intercultural schools requires leaders to become knowledgeable, cultivate moral virtues and develop moral imaginations as well as to possess moral reasoning skills. In intercultural settings these components imply the need to openly address, and indeed expose, issues of class, culture and equity. Leaders must simultaneously develop their own and their communities’ moral literacy through promoting and structuring community-wide learning through participatory moral dialogue. This involves sharing purpose, asking hard questions and exposing and acknowledging identities.

The third article by Paul Begley and Jacqueline Stefkovich, both from the Pennsylvania State University, begins to close the gap between conceptual discussions of moral literacy and the specifics of actual teaching practices in post secondary education. This article explores the nature of moral literacy as it applies to leadership development and outlines some processes for promoting moral literacy through teaching in colleges and universities. Instructional principles for the integration of values and ethics into post secondary teaching are outlined and several successful techniques are illustrated. These include teaching activities such as the “value audit”, “personal inventories”, “problem interpretation protocols” and the “use of case studies”.

The next three articles focus on specific applications of moral literacy in the college or university sector. Pauline Leonard, from Louisiana Tech University, provides a framework for conceptualizing three dispositional-related stages that educators may experience in their professional careers and addresses the implications of these stages for integrating moral literacy perspectives into initial and advanced teacher and leader certification programs. Anthony Normore of Florida International University, and Stephanie Paul Doscher of Miami-Dad County Public Schools explore the use of media as the basis for a social issues approach to promoting moral literacy and effective teaching in educational leadership programs. Their premise is that the use of mass media venues, when compounded with moral grounding, better equips educational leaders to act with ethical orientations. Joan Shapiro and Robert Hassinger of Temple University round out this trio of articles focused on teaching at the university level with an article that provides a rationale for the use of case studies in university teaching with a special emphasis on social justice. It discusses briefly the strengths and weaknesses of using these types of case studies in the classroom. In particular, it explains how both the rational and emotional minds can be addressed, through the use of these moral dilemmas, by introducing two concepts: Multiple Ethical Paradigms and Turbulence Theory.

The final three articles of the special issue shift the focus from teaching at the university level to teaching in the K-12 sector of three nations. Christopher Branson, a secondary school principal and scholar from Brisbane, Australia begins with a research report that explores the use of structured self-reflection to nurture moral consciousness as a means of enhancing the moral leadership capacity of existing school principals. Data from this research support the view that the moral consciousness of each of the participating principals in this study was clearly enhanced by their experience of structured self-reflection. Given the stronger moral expectations now demanded of contemporary leaders, structured self-reflection affords a clearly achievable means for nurturing a leader’s moral consciousness as an essential step in their professional development in moral leadership. Lindy Zaretsky, a Superintendent with the Simcoe County District School Board in Ontario, Canada presents a second article focused on the K-12 sector. This article proposes a framework for integrating social responsibility within the accountability context now prevalent across the regular and special education in Canadian and American schools within a discussion of many of the different theories that exist concerning trans-disciplinary forms of inclusive education. The final article by Bradley Zdenek and Daniel Schochor of The Pennsylvania State University identifies the practical implications of the teacher’s role in implementing a program related to developing moral literacy in students as well as articulating what is necessary for professional development opportunities intended to educate teachers in the realm of moral literacy. The article highlights the pervasive need for professional development opportunities for teachers expected by their districts to implement programs related to moral literacy in their classrooms.

I am grateful to Ross Thomas, Editor of the Journal of Educational Administration, and to Emerald Press for the opportunity to publish this special issue on the integration of moral literacy content and process in teaching.

Paul T. BegleyGuest Editor