Teaching Goodness: Moral Development Theory and the Teaching of Ethics

This paper investigates some implications of moral development theory for teaching ethics. A summary of moral development theory, focusing on the work of James Rest, provides the basis for our investigation. The authors conclude that students in a philosophical ethics course experience greater gains in moral reasoning than a control group. However, the large range of students' moral development results in discrepancies between their developmental level and the more sophisticated level of reasoning around which philosophy curricula are designed. We explore the implications of this for teaching philosophical ethics and discuss teaching strategies that facilitate growth in moral reasoning.