Moral education is ever more important in our schools today, but the various moral education traditions make it difficult to decide which tradition best serves our purpose and population. This dissertation develops and uses an original analytic framework to narrow the choices of moral education curricula. The analytic framework introduced presuppositions that expounded upon one's center of value or source of moral authority, the nature of people and their capacity for rational thought, the nature of society, the time orientation of tradition, and the resulting morality in action. The analytic framework was then applied to ten notable traditions: Catholic religious education, values clarification, Kohlberg's cognitive-developmental theory, five multicultural education traditions (Teaching the Exceptional and Culturally Different, Human Relations, Single-Group Studies, Multicultural Education, and Education that is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist) reviewed by Sleeter & Grant, and Skinner's theory of behavior modification. This study presents the analytic framework in depth and offers a brief narrative of its application across traditions. The resulting synthesis offers a review of commonalities, differences, surprises, and finally, a proposal that an existing presupposition stands as the defining one in regard to differentiating among moral education traditions.

This report on the formulation and operation of a plan for character education in a rural secondary school is submitted in the hope that it may be one of many similar studies aimed to stimulate interest in and foster character building. It is not contended that this is a perfect scheme. Its defects were clearly revealed in its five years of operation. Its influence and results are more clearly apparent to those who view it from the distance. One of the new teachers stated in February, "I don't know what's responsible but the boys and girls in this school are finer in their perceptions of civic relationship, and more cooperative in spirit, and evidence more desire for right conduct, than those in any other school in which I've taught." If this is the result of the experiment, then, no matter how far short of our ideal we fell, it is still worth while.

Why and, if so, how should educators cultivate hope in hopeless times? I defend a novel interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s theory of moral education - specifically, what I call his “pedagogy of hope,” a pedagogical method Kant prescribes to moral educators in the ‘Doctrine of Method’ of the Critique of Practical Reason for the purpose of cultivating virtuous character. According to Kant, moral educators should cultivate students’ hope for moral progress in order to sustain their moral motivation in the face of uncertainty, failures, and suffering. Kant’s two-step pedagogical method amounts to an aesthetic education, in the sense that it mirrors his account of the relationship between feeling and judgment in experiences of the beautiful and the sublime. Drawing on that account, I describe how, for Kant, moral educators can cultivate hope by developing students’ judgment through deliberation of examples of moral conduct and of moral exemplars.

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This study explores the intersection of two major conceptions in higher education: professors' folk pedagogies and teaching's moral dimension. Folk pedagogy is the accumulated set of beliefs, conceptions and assumptions that professors personally hold about the practice of teaching (Bruner, 1996). When these beliefs and conceptions are enacted as a teaching practice, they are conceivably undertaken on behalf of students as the means to a good end. Professors, in the course of enacting their folk pedagogies, make educational decisions -- value determinations in essence -- about what they believe are in the best interests of their students. In so doing they have entered moral territory. To make these decisions, issues related to moral perception, moral imagination, and moral responsiveness are present. This moral dimension of teaching was found in this study to be an inherent feature of the participants' folk pedagogy. Pursuing tangible exemplars of these ideas, this study accomplished three key objectives. First, it explored and described some key features of professors' folk pedagogies. Second, it examines the discourse that emerged from the folk pedagogy investigation for its moral expressions and the insights it offered toward understanding how professors conceive of teaching as a moral endeavor. Finally, using narrative analysis as the guiding methodology, it retold professors' personal narratives - their discursive practices - as a unified story of moral agency and moral discourse in university teaching. These objectives were satisfied through case study investigations of three professors, wherein each participant professor was interviewed and observed teaching over the course of nine weeks. Although this investigation sought to explore moral discourse, four additional discourses were discovered interacting with the moral discourse - the personal discourse, a professional discourse, an academic discourse, and the institutional discourse. It was found that rather than there being one singular moral discourse, each independent discourse possessed its own moral substance. A full view of the moral discourse, therefore, can only be achieved by looking across all of the independent discourses themselves. Interestingly, the nature of the moral discourse and moral agency varied for each professor depending upon which independent discourse dominated her or his practice. For example, those professors engaged in professional disciplines (i.e., business and engineering) exhibited practices dominated by what is termed here a professional discourse. In contrast, the practice of the philosophy professor was dominated by the academic discourse. In each case, however, the moral discourse revealed itself most often when professors' engaged in closer, more personal interactions with students and during their consideration of students in their course planning. Moral discourse and moral agency for the professors in this study played an important role in their overall folk pedagogy and in many instances served as an unintentional pedagogical tool. / Ph. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-103).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 100-103). Also available in print.

No description available.

李小玲撰. / 據稿本複印. / Thesis (M.A.)--香港中文大學. / Ju gao ben fu yin. / Li Xiaoling zhuan. / Thesis (M.A.)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue. / 表一至卅六的目錄　　　　　 --- p.V / 圖一至三的目錄　　　　　　 --- p.X / 附錄一至四的目錄　　　　　 --- p.XI / 鳴謝 --- p.XII / Chapter 第一章 --- 引言 / Chapter 一、一 --- 青少年心態 --- p.1 / Chapter 一、二 --- 教育署的行動 --- p.4 / Chapter 一、三 --- 各界對「學校德育指引」的回應 --- p.5 / Chapter 一、四 --- 傳播中心的錄影帶製作 --- p.7 / Chapter 第二章 --- 擴散的理論與研究 / Chapter 二、一 --- 擴散的定義　　　　　 --- p.9 / Chapter 二、二 --- 擴散研究面對的批評　 --- p.11 / Chapter 二、三 --- 擴散理論的再思　　　 --- p.20 / Chapter 二、四 --- 從過往研究看新事物的界定 --- p.24 / Chapter 二、五 --- 從過往研究看新事物的分類 --- p.28 / Chapter 二、六 --- 新事物的（認知）屬性 --- p.32 / Chapter 第三章 --- 研究目的及方法 / Chapter 三、一 --- 宗教德育錄影帶節目這新事物 --- p.35 / Chapter 三、二 --- 進行這項研究的原因　　 --- p.39 / Chapter 三、三 --- 研究方法　 --- p.44 / Chapter 三、三、一 --- 實地觀察 --- p.45 / Chapter 三、三、二 --- 調查 --- p.55 / Chapter 第四章 --- 研究假設及結果 / Chapter 四、一 --- 一般性資料 --- p.60 / Chapter 四、二 --- 租用者決定租用錄影帶節目所經過的階段 --- p.62 / Chapter 四、三 --- 租用者租用錄影帶節目的原因 --- p.69 / Chapter 四、四 --- 不租用者不租用錄影帶節目的原因 --- p.73 / Chapter 四、五 --- 影響教師會否租用錄影帶節目的因素 --- p.76 / Chapter 四、六 --- 本研究所受到的限制　　 --- p.96 / Chapter 第五章 --- 結論 --- p.102 / 註釋 --- p.109 / 表一至卅六 --- p.132 / 圖一至三 --- p.150 / 附錄一至四 --- p.153 / 參考書目 --- p.179