PROMOTING ETHICAL REASONING, AFFECT AND BEHAVIOR AMONG HIGH-SCHOOL-STUDENTS - AN EVALUATION OF 3 TEACHING STRATEGIES

Ethics education should aim to promote students' maturity across a bro ad spectrum of moral functioning, including moral reasoning, moral aff ect and moral behaviour. To identify the most effective strategy for p romoting the comprehensive moral maturity of high school students, we enrolled students in one of four groups: an introductory ethics class, a blended economics-ethics class, a role-model ethics class taught by graduate students and a non-ethics comparison class. Pretest and post -test instruments measured the ways students (a) reason, (b) feel and (c) act with regard to ethical-normative issues. The results indicated that the approaches to teaching ethics varied considerably in terms o f their ability to promote significant positive changes in students' m oral reasoning, empathy and behaviour.