moral education

Introduction
Carol R. Keyes
It’s a dance, a dance between teacher and student and parent and child and parent and teacher and so on. Knowing when to respond and when to let go and let them find out on their own is a dance, a subtle communication of letting each other know what our needs are and how we can help each other. Interview, teacher (Henry, 1996, p. 182)
While the value of the home/school partnership is universally accepted, it is not always easy to promote or maintain.(1) As we have moved from small communities with intimate connections to a very diverse mobile culture, the increasing complexity of relationships, roles, and functions has often complicated the collaborations. This paper focuses on teachers’ responsibilities in the parent-teacher partnership, and although the partnership needs to be a two-way dynamic to work, “teachers are really the glue that holds the home/school partnerships together” (Patrikakou & Weissberg, 1999, p. 36).
The paper is organized into two parts. In the first part is a review of the literature related to parent-teacher partnerships. In the second part, I propose a theoretical framework through which teachers can enhance parent-teacher partnerships.

Abstract
Noting the importance of the parent-teacher relationship to maintaining good home-school partnerships, this paper discusses the research on parent-teacher partnerships, including factors that affect the development of effective relationships: (1) the degree of match between teachers’ and parents’ cultures and values, (2) societal forces at work on family and school, and (3) how teachers and parents view their roles. The paper then presents a theoretical framework that teachers can use to enhance parent-teacher partnerships. This framework is based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems perspective, Getzels’ social systems perspective, Katz’s and Hoover and Dempsey’s work on the role of parents, and Epstein’s typology of parental involvement.
Body
Factors That Affect the Development of Effective Relationships
There are a number of factors that affect a teacher’s ability to develop a smooth parent-teacher partnership. Some of these factors pose problems, and the challenge is how to develop an effective working relationship in spite of the problems that may be present. The factors include (1) the degree of match between teachers’ and parents’ cultures and values, (2) societal forces at work on family and school, and (3) how teachers and parents view their roles.
The Degree of Match between Teachers’ and Parents’ Cultures and Values
In today’s mobile world, it is less likely that parents and teachers will hold beliefs and values that are closely matched compared to previous generations. In earlier times, teachers lived in the communities with families, and there was a “natural bridge” between family and school (Hymes, 1974). Now parents and teachers share the community less frequently; teachers do not have the same sense of belonging to the community that they did when they lived in the same town. Teachers often come from a socioeconomic class, race, or ethnic group that is different from the children they teach. Differences in these realms are associated with different interactional styles and language systems, as well as values, and present challenges to developing effective partnerships (Burke, 1999; Langdon & Novak, 1998; Henry, 1996).
Teachers’ own backgrounds are a key factor in how they relate to parents (Sturm, 1997; Solity, 1995). A classroom teacher’s experience highlights the influence of background and the challenges to re-creating a bridge. Participating in a teacher group discussion of intercultural communication, a teacher wrote (as if realizing it for the first time):
Culture means more than holidays and food; it includes all of the subtle patterns of communication, verbal and nonverbal, that people use every day. I noticed how easily I valued cultural diversity in the abstract or in the form of occasional holidays yet how readily I rejected cultural differences when they appeared in the form of parents’ different approaches to child rearing. (Sturm, 1997, p. 34)
She went on to write about the group’s reflection:
We realized that unexamined values, beliefs, and patterns of interaction learned when we were children exert a powerful influence on our communication and care giving routines. Our sincere intentions didn’t prevent us from rejecting parents’ diverse values when they challenged our own cherished beliefs. We were often unable to set aside our own cultural values long enough to listen to parents. (Sturm, 1997, p. 35)
From the parents’ perspective, some of the factors that influence a degree of openness include (1) cultural beliefs related to the authoritative position of teachers that prevent parents from expressing their concerns, (2) a lack of education that may cause parents to be intimidated in interactions with teachers, (3) language differences that may result in parents feeling uncomfortable if no one speaks their language, and (4) different socioeconomic levels that may result in child-rearing practices and values that conflict with those of the teachers (Keyes, 1995; Greenberg, 1989).
If there is a consistent match between teacher and family cultures and values, the probabilities are greater for developing effective professional skills in working with parents over time. In contrast, the greater the discontinuities, the more effort that is needed to promote a partnership (Lightfoot, 1978).
Societal Forces at Work on Families and Schools
The breadth of changes in society is well documented. Among these changes are the increasing reliance on technology, the changing nature of work, a more diverse population, and a more service-oriented society. For the purpose of this paper, the concern is how such forces affect schools and families. As we think about building bridges to support parent-teacher partnerships, it is critical to keep these forces in mind.
In addition to what was at one time the “traditional” two-parent family, we now have two-parent working families, single-parent families, adoptive families, and remarried or blended families, to cite just a few of the new family constellations. Family roles have also become more flexible and fluid. Mothers may function in what was once the traditional role of fathers, fathers may function as homemakers, and children may perform some parental functions for siblings. Thus, the school does not necessarily have access to a consistent adult to speak for the family. Sometimes it’s one parent; other times it’s a different parent from a blended family; and at still other times, it may be a sister, brother, or aunt—making effective communication a real challenge.
As far back as 1950, it was understood that parents and teachers had multiple responsibilities and pressing time demands:
As we work with parents, it is especially important that we not forget the complexities of family life. When we see a tired youngster coming to school, we may want to shake the parents and make them read a good article about children’s need for sleep. It is easy to forget—or maybe we never knew—that at home three children sleep in one bed while mother and father sleep in the same room with them. We put pressure on parents to come to school meetings as if these were the only true important events of the day. But parents, even very good parents who care deeply for their children, have shopping to do, floors to scrub, hair that must be washed, and often have tired feet and aching backs…. You have to avoid the error of seeing life only from the school’s side as if homes simply flowed along smoothly with no problems of their own. The closer you move to parents the more realistic your expectations become…. Each family has their private story of how it lives its present days. (Hymes, 1974, pp. 5, 17)
Twenty-nine years later, the responsibilities and time demands are still present:
But whether parents can perform effectively in their child-rearing roles within the family depends on role demand, stresses, and supports emanating from other settings. As we shall see, parents’ evaluations of their own capacity to function, as well as their view of their child, are related to such external factors as flexibility of job schedules, adequacy of child care arrangements, the presence of friends or neighbors who can help out in large and small emergencies, the quality of health, social services, and neighborhood safety. (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 7)
Both parents and teachers experience job stress. For parents, the number of hours they work, the amount of job autonomy and job demands, and relationships with supervisors affect their other relationships. For teachers, the job stress also is affected by the number of hours worked, schedules, amount of autonomy, role ambiguity, physical demands of the job, and clarity of the program (Galinsky, 1988). Teaching is physically and emotionally exhausting, and reaching out to parents is sometimes viewed as one more burdensome task. So, in fact, both parties to the relationship are buffeted by strains and tensions in their worlds.
How Teachers and Parents View Their Roles
More than half a century ago, Willard Waller (1932) observed that parents and teachers are “natural enemies.” The basis of his argument was that parents and teachers maintain qualitatively different relationships with the same child, especially in regard to affective bonds and spheres of responsibility and as a consequence want different things for the child. (Powell, 1989, p. 20)
In the past 50 years, however, there have been changes in how schools and families have viewed each other. Because of a developing awareness of the importance of the bridge between home and school, schools have reached out to families and families have pressed to be heard in schools.
Educators have described and defined the differences in the roles and spheres of responsibility of teachers and parents (Katz, 1984; Getzels, 1974). Figure 1 depicts the framework developed by Katz (1984).
Figure 1 describes the distinctions in parent and teacher roles. In Katz’s model, the teacher’s role is specific to schooling, while the parent’s is universal in all aspects of the child’s life. Teachers are responsible for all the children for a specific period confined to the school setting, and therefore the teacher’s role is more objective, detached, and rational, using insights, techniques, and abilities to support each child. The teacher’s role is shaped by professional knowledge about “all children.” Parental relationships, on the other hand, are shaped by their own child for whom they are responsible 24 hours a day and are likely to demonstrate intense partiality, attachment, and even irrationality in their interactions about their own child (Katz, 1984). Given the difference in roles, it is critical to look for the meeting points as partnerships are developed. Role Dimension Parenting Teaching
1. Scope of function Diffuse and limitless Specific and limited
2. Intensity of affect High Low
3. Attachment Optimum attachment Optimum detachment
4. Rationality Optimum irrationality Optimum rationality
5. Spontaneity Optimum spontaneity Optimum intentionally
6. Partiality Partial Impartial
7. Scope of responsibility Individual Whole group
Figure 1. Distinctions between parenting and teaching in their central tendencies on seven role dimensions (Katz, 1984).
Influences on How the Parent and Teacher Roles Are Enacted
Confusion results when teacher and parent roles become ambiguous. The first challenge is to make public some of the parameters of the role enactment patterns. The second challenge is to figure out how to use those parameters as a bridge to effective parent- teacher partnerships. Therefore, it is essential to look at some of the forces that influence how the roles are enacted.
Parents’ Role Construction
How parents view their role in relation to school also affects parent-teacher relationships. Parents’ role construction may be described as parent focused, school focused, and/or partnership focused. In the parent-focused construct, parents consider that they have primary responsibility for their children’s educational outcome. In the school-focused construct, parents feel the school is primarily responsible for the children’s educational outcome, and in the partnership-focused construct, parents believe that teacher and parent working together are responsible (Reed, Jones, Walker, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2000). It seems apparent that how parents interact will vary based upon the construct the parent holds.
Teachers’ Role Construction
Teachers’ role construction has developed primarily outside the formal education arena and is less clearly documented in the literature but is evident in the field. Teachers may view their role as parent focused, school focused, and/or partnership focused. The parent-focused view evolved out of the parent-cooperative movement. In that movement, teachers and parents worked side by side, empowering parents and giving parents teaching roles. This view is most prevalent in early childhood programs. The school-focused role reflects teachers who believe in an effective separation of roles and functions between home and school. This view is more typical in elementary schools and intensifies the older the child gets. The partnership-focus perspective, where family and school work cooperatively, is a more recent construct, evolving as the literature began to point to the significant benefits that accrue to children, parents, and teachers as a result of the partnership. As with parents, how the teachers interact will vary based upon the beliefs the teachers hold.
Teachers’ and Parents’ Efficacy Beliefs
In addition to how they construct their own understanding of role, teachers’ and parents’ sense of efficacy also influences what type of interactions they are likely to have (Reed, Jones, Walker, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2000). Research has shown us that teachers and parents with high efficacy levels are more likely to succeed in parent-teacher relationships (Garcia, 2000; Greenwood & Hickman, 1991). On the one hand, teachers and parents who have had successful interactions with each other, observed or heard about others’ successes, and/or felt that efforts were worthwhile are more likely to have that personal sense of efficacy (Garcia, 2000; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995, 1997). On the other hand, teachers and parents may have “leftover anxieties” (Taylor, 1968, p. 272) from earlier experiences with schools that influence how effective they are likely to feel. Rebuilding the bridge for effective parent-teacher relationships may require different supports for those individuals.
From the parents’ perspective, most have little choice in choosing a school. Many feel powerless to influence schools and are threatened by the authority of the school. Some feel that running the schools should be “left up to the experts” (Greenwood & Hickman, 1991; Greenberg, 1989). Some resist or are reluctant to participate because they worry about their family’s privacy. Others find the school climate or school bureaucracy hard to deal with (Henry, 1996; Comer & Haynes, 1991). The lack of clarity about what to expect at meetings and conferences also poses a challenge for the relationship (Keyes, 1979; Lortie, 1975). For many apparently uninvolved parents, their school experience was not positive, and they may now feel inadequate in the school setting (Brown, 1989).
From the teachers’ perspectives, some feel unappreciated by parents. They say that parents don’t come to conferences or meetings, don’t read the material they send home, and won’t volunteer for school activities. Some teachers feel that parents seem to lack interest in what’s going on with their children. Others describe parents as adversarial or apathetic, always a challenge (Galinsky, 1990; Hulsebosch & Logan, 1998; Langdon & Novak, 1998; Greenberg, 1989). In both teachers’ and parents’ cases, we do not know whether their lack of a sense of efficacy occurs because they have an adversarial point of view or they lack skills, or because there is a cultural division.
Teachers’ and Parents’ Expectations
Different expectations on the part of both teachers and parents may also affect the parent-teacher partnership. Often teachers and parents place different emphases on factors central to developing confidence in their relationship. For example, parents may emphasize teachers’ knowledge and skills. They want teachers to know and care about teaching, about their children, and about communicating with them. Teachers have more confidence in parents who have similar ideas about teaching issues, and child-rearing practices, and who freely share important things about their children (Powell, 1998; Rich, 1998).
Teachers’ and Parents’ Personal Attributes
Closely related to roles and efficacy are personal attributes. According to the research, several characteristics appear to positively influence parent-teacher partnerships. The relationships are enhanced when teachers’ personal attributes include warmth, openness, sensitivity, flexibility, reliability, and accessibility (Swick, 1992; Comer & Haynes, 1991). The partnerships are positively influenced when parents’ personal attributes include warmth, sensitivity, nurturance, the ability to listen, consistency, a positive self-image, personal confidence, and effective interpersonal skills (Swick, 1992). While neither teachers nor parents may have all these positive personal attributes, teachers, who are armed with this knowledge, may be more effective at bridging.
Teacher and Parent Communication
One of the categories of parent involvement identified by Epstein (1995) is communication. This communication includes teacher invitations, first meetings with parents, conferences, and adapting communication to meet the diverse needs of parents. Two aspects of communication, first meetings and teacher invitations, have significance because they influence how roles will be enacted as partnerships develop. First meetings with parents, often the first personal connection that is made, set the tone for the subsequent relationship, making it critical to be aware of issues of cultural styles in conversation, space, and eye contact. Research suggests that the teachers’ invitations to parents are also a critical factor in promoting more extensive parent involvement.
Literature Review Summary
The research described above tells us that effective parent-teacher relations are founded on (1) the understanding of the unique elements of the parents’ and teachers’ roles and how they complement each other and (2) subsequent modifications of their roles growing out of negotiations that reflect the unique needs of both parent and teacher. In effective partnerships, parents and teachers educate each other during open two-way communication. Each point of view enlightens the other. “Mutually responsive relationships seem more likely to flourish if such programs focus more on the interconnectedness of parents and teachers through their mutual commitment to children and on exploring ways to enhance and celebrate this connectedness” (Sumsion, 1999).
If these effective partnerships are to develop, the literature also tells us to be cognizant of the factors described earlier and recognize (1) the diversity in teachers’ and parents’ cultures and values including their backgrounds, race, ethnic group, socioeconomic class, and educational level; (2) forces such as technology, workplace characteristics, and changing family structures; and (3) influences on teachers’ and parents’ enactment of their roles including how they construct their roles, their sense of efficacy, their expectations and personal attributes, and their communication styles.
Moving Toward a Theoretical Framework
In this portion of the paper, I have created a theoretical model that attempts to unite much of the literature reviewed above. I will use two different frameworks in presenting this model. The first is the ecological systems perspective, and the second comes from the social system perspective.
Ecological Systems Perspective
“The ecology of human development involves the scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation between an active growing human being and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives, as this process is affected by relations between these settings and by the larger contexts in which the settings are embedded” (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 21). The ecological environment, according to this theory, consists of a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls. At the innermost level is the immediate setting containing the developing person. This microsystem concerns relations between the person and his or her immediate environment. The next circle, the mesosystem, represents the relation between the settings in which the developing person participates (e.g., work and home, home and school). The third level, the exosystem, refers to one or more settings that affect the person but do not contain the person (e.g., workplace or church). The final level, the macrosystem, refers to values, laws, and customs of the culture that influence all the lower orders (see Figure 2). Within this theoretical structure, there is interconnectedness both within and between the settings (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 8). Figure 2. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model.
In Figure 3, I present the first part of my model by integrating the research on parent-teacher roles into the Bronfenbrenner model. The box to the left represents all of the qualities of the teacher that have developed in the microsystem. The box to the right represents all of the qualities of the parent that have developed in the microsystem. The inner-most circle, the microsystem, represents the teacher-as-person or parent-as-person with all the factors described earlier—culture, values, role understanding, sense of efficacy, personality characteristics, expectations, communication skills, knowledge of the child or children—that have developed from their experiences including the present challenges to building and bridging the partnership above. The next circle represents the mesosytem where the adults interact within the school bringing what they have experienced with them. The two outer circles, exosystem and macrosystem, represent the societal influences of the more distant environments and contexts including workplaces, laws, and customs. This adaptation of Bronfenbrenner’s model helps us to see the complexity of the teacher-as-person and the parent-as-person, and the skill that is required to bridge the differences that exist.

• Culture and values
• Role understanding
• Sense of efficacy
• Personality characteristics
• Expectations
• Communication skills
• Knowledge of children
• Professional knowledge and skills • Culture and values
• Role understanding
• Sense of efficacy
• Personality characteristics
• Expectations
• Communication skills
• Knowledge of the child
Figure 3. Ecology of the teacher and ecology of the parent.
The second aspect of the model considers the significance of the child (Figure 4). The parent-teacher pairing occurs by assignment. Their common interest is the child. Though the child only appears in this figure within this proposed model, the child is a variable that is pervasive. How parent and teacher come together over their common interest in that child is influenced not only by the mitigating personal and social factors mentioned in Figure 2 but also by how they each interact with the child, and their feelings with regard to that child. Recall that in the role description the parent focuses on her child, and the teacher must view the child as an individual but also part of the class (Sumsion, 1999). Figure 4. The child in the model.
Social System Perspective
The third aspect of my model utilizes Getzels’ social system perspective (Getzels, 1978). Just as the ecological perspective helps remind us of the complexity of the individuals, in this case the teacher and the parent, a social system perspective helps us to understand the dynamic quality of the interaction between the participants and their impact on each other. Figure 5 shows Getzels’ social system model. Figure 5. Getzels’ social system. Looking at Figure 5, the elements of the system include an institution with its roles and expectations, the normative dimension; and individuals with their personalities and dispositions, the personal dimension. Behavior is a result of the interplay between the role and expectations and the personalities of the individuals involved.(2) Real individuals occupy roles, and each individual stamps a role with a unique style.
The teacher and parent meet together as adults, about their common interest the child, each bringing their life experience and all the forces that affect them to a social system (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The social system provides the framework for the interaction. In the partnership, defined as the social system in this case, the factors described above influence the relationship. Looking at Figure 5, the top row of social system sets out the influences of the institution, role, and expectations. The teacher’s role is specific, detached, rational, intentional, impartial, and focusing on the whole group, while the parent’s role is diffuse, attached, irrational, spontaneous, partial, and individual (Katz, 1984). The bottom row sets out the influences of the individual personality and dispositions. Here the focus is the teacher’s or parent’s construction of role, sense of efficacy, expectations, personal attributes, and communication skills. A parent may be parent focused, school focused, and/or partnership focused (Reed, Jones, Walker, & Hoover-Dempsey, 2000); and the teacher may be parent focused, school focused, and/or partnership focused (Garcia, 2000; Swick, 1992; Greenwood & Hickman, 1991). Institution is not referred to, although the institution and its characteristics play a role, particularly in what kinds of parent involvement (Epstein, 1995) will be promoted.(3) This interpretation of Getzels’ model highlights the dynamic and complex nature of the parent-teacher partnership and the importance of considering the interplay among all the elements. Figure 6. The teacher and parent in the social system.
The Role of Communication in the Theoretical Framework
Epstein’s typology includes six major aspects of parent involvement. In Figure 7, I have created a graphic to show the significance of communication in relation to the other five categories. As noted earlier, two aspects of communication, first meetings with parents and teachers’ invitations, play a crucial role in influencing how parent-teacher partnerships will develop. As discussed above, communication skills are part of the personal dimension of the social system. However, a separate figure has been created to accentuate the importance of that communication to bridging, leading to initial effective parent-teacher partnerships as well as promoting more extensive parent involvement as characterized by Epstein’s typology (Epstein, 1995). Figure 7. The importance of communication.
In Figure 8, I present the full model. My hope is that teachers will use the model as a way of thinking and visualizing (1) their approach to the parent-teacher partnership and (2) their reflection about interactions that have taken place. The process does not dampen spontaneity but rather provides distance, so that teachers can view events from more than their own perspective. Working within the framework may help teachers consider their attitudes about the value of parent-teacher partnership, look at its construct, and monitor their responses to individual situations.

• Culture and values
• Role understanding
• Sense of efficacy
• Personality characteristics
• Expectations
• Communication skills
• Knowledge of children
• Professional knowledge and skills • Culture and values
• Role understanding
• Sense of efficacy
• Personality characteristics
• Expectations
• Communication skills
• Knowledge of the child Figure 8. A theoretical framework for parent-teacher partnerships.
Incorporating the Theoretical Framework into Teacher Education
We know that “teachers’ collaborative relations with parents and work in a family context do not come about naturally or easily” (Powell, 1998, p. 66). From the very first teaching assignment, many teachers find themselves struggling in working with families. Some have ethical concerns; others just lack knowledge, skills, and strategies (Powell, 1989). Professionals have repeatedly challenged the field to provide both teacher and administrator training in working with parents (Powell, 1998; Epstein, 1989). In the past few years, teacher education programs have responded by developing a range of activities to accomplish that preparation (de Acosta, 1996; French, 1996; Koerner & Hulsebosch, 1996; Morris et al., 1996; Silverman, Welty, & Lyons, 1996). This theoretical framework, a systemic model that considers complexity, dynamics, and interrelationships (Senge, 1990), would also make an important contribution towards preparing teachers to work more effectively with the diverse parents they now encounter in schools.
Notes
1. Though I don’t discuss the values of family/school relationships in this article, it is important to share the values that accrue to parents, teachers, and children with both parents and teachers. There are many articles to use as sources (Coleman, 1997; Kieff & Wellhousen, 2000; Thorkildsen & Scott Stein, 1998; Epstein, 1995; Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler, 1995; Comer & Haynes, 1991; Becher, 1986; Lightfoot, 1978; Hymes, 1974; Greenberg, 1989).
2. There are the elements of communities and values in Getzels’ social system, and they affect the institution and the individual as both affect the communities and values. I have omitted discussing them for now because Bronfenbrenner’s ecology takes care of them and I want to keep this first framework less complicated for teachers.
3. Gemeinschaft and Gesselschaft are two sociological terms that may be used to describe institutions. Gemeinschaft refers to local community and Gesselschaft the larger society. If the institution, school in this case, is more Gemeinschaft, it is more likely to relate to family/school/community partnerships and collaborations. If the institution is more Gesselschaft, it is more likely to be corporate in nature and likely to foster family school separation. For a full discussion of this aspect of the institution, see Cibulka and Kritek (1996), Henry (1996), and Sergiovanni (1996).
Moral Development and Character Formation
Larry Nucci
University of Illinois at Chicago
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Copyright © 1997, Larry Nucci.
In Walberg, H. J. & Haertel, G. D. (1997). Psychology and educational practice. Berkeley: MacCarchan. p. 127-157.
As in many areas of educational research, the field of moral education is rife with controversy. These disputes are not limited to psychological accounts of the nature of moral development or character formation, but extend to the very definition of educational aims in this area. Arguments surrounding the aims of values education capture the essential quandary for any pluralist democracy attempting to construct a shared civil society without privileging the particular values of any one group. At the heart of the matter is whether we can point to a set of moral values that would form the basis of an "overlapping consensus" that would permit approaches to moral education that appeal to more than local or particularistic values. Without such consensus the incommensurable qualities of local values would render shared notions of a moral community impossible. A related issue is whether there are features of individual psychology which can be appealed to in fostering the development of children who would act in accordance with such common or transcendent moral values. The contribution which educational psychology can make with regard to these issues is to clarify how moral and social values are formed, and to address the social and psychological factors which contribute to the tendency of individuals to act in ways that are concordant with their own well-being and the welfare of others. Controversies notwithstanding, the past several decades have witnessed a great deal of progress with regard to our understanding of these issues. This chapter will address those aspects of what has been learned in the areas of developmental and educational psychology that can help educators engage in meaningful moral and character education.
Historically, these issues have been approached from two perspectives with divergent, though overlapping, interests and differing sets of assumptions about the nature of social development and socialization. On the one hand have been traditional character educators (Ryan & McLean, 1987) whose emphasis has been on processes of internalization and self control that would ostensibly result in virtuous conduct. On the other hand have been cognitive developmentalists (Power, Higgins & Kohlberg, 1989) whose emphasis has been on the development of structures of moral reasoning which ostensibly underlie action choices. These two points of view, one (character education) emphasizing non-rational mechanisms of self-control and behavioral follow-through, and the other (cognitive developmental) emphasizing rationality in the form of moral decision-making, are irreconcilable in terms of underlying philosophy. Moreover, at the level of educational policy, these two perspectives have tended to take turns over the past thirty years in dominating the attention of educators interested in fostering children 's social as well as academic growth. Yet, neither point of view, in their traditional form provides a sufficient basis for guiding educational policy. There can be no meaningful moral action in the absence of moral judgment since morality by definition requires choice and intent. Thus, proponents of educational policies that ignore the development of moral decision making have generally absented themselves from offering suggestions in the area of moral education. Conversely, the development of moral judgment, though necessary, is not a sufficient aim of moral education (Power et. al., 1989). For moral judgment, in and of itself, does not lead to a particular course of action. It would appear then, that the divergent aims of these two points of view for the development of moral reasoning, and the development of characterological propensities for moral follow through are both desirable and necessary components of any educational contribution to children 's moral growth. This chapter, therefore, will pull information from diverse areas of research to construct a coherent picture integrating both sets of concerns. In order to reconcile these points of view, I will need to appeal to contemporary cognitive theories of personality formation (Sarbin, 1986), and recent work on the development of the moral "self" (Noam & Wren, 1993), rather than restrict discussion to the behavioral and social learning perspectives that have been traditionally used in support of character education. We begin this discussion by looking at the issue of moral judgment.
The Development of Moral and Social Understandings
What Do We Mean by Morality? A large part of the controversy surrounding moral or character education has to do with how morality is to be defined. In everyday discourse morality refers simply to the norms of right and wrong conduct. At issue, however, is what is meant by moral right and wrong, and whose criteria shall be used to judge the wrongness of actions. As it turns out, this diversity at the level of public opinion, has a corollary in the underlying heterogeneity of the structures of the individual 's social concepts. Within the individual, concepts of social right and wrong are not all of one type, but are organized within distinct conceptual and developmental frameworks. In research conducted over the past twenty years, it has been discovered that individuals treat some forms of social behavior as moral universals, other forms of social conduct as subject to determination by local cultural or social norms, and still others as matters of personal choice (Turiel, 1983). More specifically, these conceptual differences emerge when formal criteria for morality are employed which define morality as those interpersonal behaviors that are held to be right or wrong independent of governing social rules, and maintained as universally binding (Turiel, 1983). Prescriptions which meet these criteria are those which refer to actions, such as hitting and hurting, stealing, slander, which have an impact on the welfare of others. Accordingly, concepts of morality have been found to be structured by underlying conceptions of justice and welfare (Turiel, 1983). Morality, then, may be defined as one 's concepts, reasoning, and actions which pertain to the welfare, rights and fair treatment of persons.
Morality (defined in terms of justice, welfare, rights) can be distinguished from concepts of social conventions, which are the consensually determined standards of conduct particular to a given social group. Conventions established by social systems such as norms or standards of dress, how people should address one another, table manners and so forth derive their status as correct or incorrect forms of conduct from their embeddedness within a particular shared system of meaning and social interaction. The particular acts in and of themselves have no prescriptive force in that different or even opposite norms (e.g., dresses for men, pants for women) could be established to achieve the same symbolic or regulatory function (e.g., distinguishing men from women). The importance of conventions lies in the function they serve to coordinate social interaction and discourse within social systems. In keeping with this definition, concepts of social convention have been found to be structured by underlying conceptions of social organization (Turiel, 1983).
The distinctions which have been drawn between morality and social convention have been sustained by findings from over 50 studies conducted since 1975. This research has indicated that children, adolescents, and adults treat violations of morality, such as harming another, as wrong whether or not there is a governing rule in effect, and generalize these judgments of wrongness to members of other cultures or groups which may not have norms regarding such actions. Conventions, on the other hand, are viewed as binding only within the context of an existing social norm, and only for participating members within a given social group. While there is some controversy over whether the distinction between morality and convention is made by members of all cultural groups, a number of studies have demonstrated that subjects from a wide variety of the world 's cultures do differentiate between matters of morality and convention. Evidence in support of the morality/convention distinction has been obtained from subjects in Brazil, India, Israel (Arab and Israeli subjects), Korea, Nigeria, Virgin Islands, and Zambia. Moreover, recent research has demonstrated that something parallel to the distinction between morality and social convention operates within the moral and normative conceptions of religious children and adolescents with respect to their conceptions of religious rules. It has been found (Nuuci, 1989) that children and adolescents from observant religious groups (Amish-Mennonite and Orthodox Jews) judged certain religious norms (e.g., day of worship, work on the Sabbath, baptism, circumcision, wearing of head coverings, women leading worship services, premarital sex between consenting adults, keeping Kosher) in conventional terms in that they regarded these as contingent on religious authority or the word of God, and as particular to their religion. In contrast, moral issues (e.g., stealing, hitting, slander) were regarded as prescriptive (wrong to do) independent of the existence of a rule established by religious authority or by God 's word, and as obligatory for members of all other religious groups.
The discovery of these psychological distinctions between moral and conventional forms of social right and wrong provides an empirical basis for beginning to address some of the definitional issues vexing moral education (Nucci, 1989). In differentiating what is moral from what is socially "proper", these findings can allow educators to focus the discussion of moral education on questions of how best to develop children 's moral understandings (i.e., concepts of welfare and fairness), and their tendencies to act in accord with such moral principles, rather than being captured by heated arguments over which set of local conventions or religious norms ought to be included within the collection of values to be addressed by the curriculum. In keeping with the broad cross cultural generalizability of this research, the identification of morality as centered around issues of justice and human welfare is consistent with common sense construals of the basic task of values education as fostering the development of people who don 't lie, cheat, steal, or hurt others. At the same time, the grounding of these definitions of the content of morality in basic developmental research, avoids falling into the trap of what Lawrence Kohlberg so aptly and perjoratively labeled the "bag of virtues" approach to establishing the aims of moral education. These core moral concerns for fairness and welfare are not virtues in the usual sense, but constitute the central issues for moral judgments and consequent actions.
The distinction between morality and convention also allows the educator to give convention its due. Earlier analyses of children 's moral development, such as Kohlberg 's stage theory (see Power et. al., 1989), interpreted attention to convention as characteristic of the reasoning of persons at lower stages of moral development, and therefore as something to be overcome through moral education. As stated above, concepts of conventions are now understood as distinct from moral understandings, and structured by children 's and adolescents ' emerging conceptualizations of social systems and social organization. Conventions are constituent elements of social systems. Just as morality is fundamental to interpersonal interaction, conventions are essential to the operation of society. The development of children 's and adolescents ' understandings of the functions and purposes of social convention, therefore, have educational worth in their own right (Nucci, 1989). In sum, current research on the structure of children 's social concepts, provides an empirical basis for differentially addressing development within each of these conceptual systems rather than reducing either morality or conventional norms to a single framework.
Context, and the Inevitability of Controversy. While the discovery of distinct domains of social knowledge can help to focus the aims of moral education by identifying the core content of morality (Nucci, 1989), the heterogeneity in people 's social understandings, and the contextual overlap of moral and non-moral normative components in everyday life means that an honest approach to moral education will always need to contend with contradiction and controversy. Such overlap is inevitable given that all social interactions take place within societal systems framed by conventions. Thus, although many everyday issues are straightforward instances of either morality or convention, many others contain aspects from more than one domain. In such cases, people may differ from one another in terms of the information they may bring to a situation, or the weight they may give to one or another feature of a given issue. Two basic forms of overlap occur between morality and convention. In one form, called domain mixture, conventional norms sustaining a particular organizational structure are in harmony or conflict with what would objectively be seen as concerns for fairness or rights. Examples of such overlap would be conventions for lining up to purchase tickets, or gender role conventions which proscribe areas in which men or women may participate. In the former case, the convention (lining up), while a morally neutral and arbitrary way to arrange people, could be used to serve a distributive justice function (turn taking), and cutting in line would, therefore, become unfair. In the latter case, the convention (gender role) may be in conflict with fairness if the convention prevents members of one gender from obtaining opportunities afforded the other. The second type of moral/convention overlap, labeled second order moral events, occurs when the violation of a strongly held convention is seen as causing psychological harm (insult, distress) to persons maintaining the convention. In our culture, for example, attending a funeral in a bathing suit would generally be seen as insensitive toward the deceased and the grieving family, and not merely an instance of unconventional conduct.
In responding to issues that involve elements from more than one domain, individuals may either subordinate the issue to a single dimension and reduce an issue of overlap to one that is primarily either moral or conventional, or engage in an effort to coordinate the multifaceted nature of the issue taking the moral as well non-moral aspects of a given situation or event into account. These responses to overlap at an individual level help to account for the inconsistencies we observe within people as they respond to events in different contexts (a subject I will take up later). They also help to explain how cultural groups, or subgroups arrive at different readings of social issues they consider to be morally neutral or charged with moral meaning. Within western society, those instances of overlap in which convention and morality are in harmony account for the moral component of what is generally viewed as mannerly and respectful conduct, and for the moral aspect of norms and procedures that sustain participatory forms of government. For the most part, within democratic societies, these areas of overlap are non-controversial inasmuch as they represent values concordant with morality and the conventional status quo. Consequently, values education programs purporting to foster such conventional values enjoy wide public support. Controversies are likely to emerge, however, whenever the relations between moral and non-moral components of issues are not in accord, and, therefore likely to be viewed differently by the affected parties. In the case of second-order issues such as disputes over what constitutes modesty in forms of dress (e.g., women 's skirt length), the essentially conventional nature of such issues generally allows for local consensus to settle the matter. While some civil libertarians might protest any constraint on student choice with respect to personal conduct, and some conservative religious people might protest as immoral, any alteration in the norms of public conduct, such second-order issues are generally resolved by elected school boards, or school policy. More problematic for curriculum designers and educational policy makers are potential conflicts between morality and convention embedded within the norms that sustain existing social order, and by implication benefit members of the privileged social classes.
An illustrative example of this type of issue is nicely captured in the following incident described by Maya Agelou (1971, pg. 39) in her novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." The passage recalls an incident in which a local judge mistakenly refers to Maya Angelou 's grandmother by the title, Mrs. The use of the title was a mistake, because the conventions of the depression era south decreed that whites, but not blacks be referred to by titles. Through the discriminatory use of titles, whites symbolically maintained their social supremacy over blacks. In the situation described by Maya Angelou, her grandmother was subpoenaed to give testimony before the judge. She writes:
The judge asked that Mrs. Henderson be subpoenaed, and when Momma arrived and said she was Mrs. Henderson, the judge, the bailiff and other whites in the audience laughed. The judge had really made a gaffe calling a Negro woman Mrs., but then he was from Pine Bluff and couldn 't have been expected to know that a woman who owned a store in that village would also turn out to be colored. The whites tickled their funny bones with the incident for a long time, and the Negroes thought it proved the worth and majesty of my grandmother.
From the vantage point of our current understanding of racial prejudice and segregation within American society, the treatment accorded to Maya Angelou 's mother was clearly unjust and immoral. That is, despite the arbitrary and conventional nature of titles, we now generally acknowledge that their discriminatory use as depicted in this particular context served the immoral purpose of symbolically subjugating and consequently humiliating African-Americans. What is interesting in this example is how the parties at that time viewed the employment of the titles Mr. and Mrs. In general situations these titles serve to convey hierarchical relations between adults and children, and in formal situations establish respect between adults of equal status. In the situation described by Angelou, they were used to establish the socially inferior position of African-Americans (Negroes) in relation to whites. From the white position of power, the judge 's "gaffe" was a source of humor, because the judge could not have intended to elevate a Negro woman to the same status as a white. For those whites who viewed the use of first names, when addressing adult African- Americans, as sustaining the social system, and for those African- Americans who might have accepted the status quo, the issue was one of conventionality, and the judge 's gaffe, simply a humorous error. From that vantage point, the judge as a white man, would have been right, and had the right to refer to Maya Angelou 's grandmother by her first name. On the other hand, for those African Americans in Maya Angelou 's community, who viewed it as unjust to employ titles to symbolically maintain them in an inferior social position, the issue was one of morality, an understanding that could only be arrived at by coordinating concerns for fairness with concepts of conventions as constitutive elements of the social order. From that vantage point, the judge 's implicit acknowledgment of her grandmother 's social accomplishments (being a store owner) put her on an even footing with whites, and served as a source of pride, and confirmation that the discriminatory social practices they endured were artificial and unsustainable in the light of an objective view of the situation. From the point of view of the African-American community, the judge 's "gaffe" inadvertently correctly captured the right of Maya Angelou 's grandmother to be called Mrs.
While this incident from America 's past is easy to look at in the cool light of history, such issues are not easily dealt with when they concern contemporary practices. Two of the elements that lend to the difficulty in dealing with these issues are captured in the above example. First, the conventionalized practices (e.g., forms of address, modes of dress) in and of themselves are morally neutral and play themselves out in the course of everyday life. Thus, people steeped in a particular way of life may not be cognizant of the moral implications of their particular social system. The problem here, of course, is that inequitable systems may simply perpetuate themselves, and educational curricula based on transmitting the values of the community may become the hand-maidens of immorality. Second, because such issues are multifaceted, they lend themselves to more than one interpretation, raising the specter of controversy for the educational system. This is particularly problematic for public schools since such controversies tend to have political ramifications. Generally, people in positions of relative power and privilege are more likely to view such issues in conventional terms and favor maintenance of the status quo, since the conventional system serves their personal interests. People on the receiving end of such conventionalized inequities, on the other hand, are less likely to subordinate such overlapping issues to convention, and more likely to be cognizant of their moral status. The moral dilemma these overlapping issues pose for educators is how to allow students to address the moral contradictions posed by some of society 's conventions in areas such as gender and race relations without themselves becoming subject to the positions held by political groups that inevitably align themselves with one or another side of such issues.
Moral Diversity and Informational Assumptions Variations in the moral meanings people attribute to particular actions stem not only from the areas of overlap between morality and the conventions of social systems, but also arise as a result of the differences in factual assumptions people make about given acts. Within our own culture, for example, people hold different views about whether it is morally wrong or all right to engage in the physical punishment of children. In her research on this issue, Wainryb (1991) found that pro corporal punishment parents held the view that this behavior was all right because it was a highly effective, educative act rather than one of unprovoked harm or abuse of the child. When such parents were presented with information that spanking is no more effective than other methods of disciplining children, significant numbers of parents shifted in their view of corporal punishment and maintained that it was not all right for parents to engage in the behavior. Conversely, when parents who maintained that it was wrong to engage in corporal punishment were presented with information that experts had found spanking to be the most efficient method to teach young children, there was a tendency for such parents to shift toward a view that corporal punishment would be all right.
In the above example, the morality of an action shifted as a function of the informational assumptions people had regarding the effect of the act. In other cases, informational assumptions can alter people 's views of the moral culpability of the actor. Many people in our culture, for example, have been found to hold to the view that homosexuality is an immoral lifestyle choice (Turiel, Hildebrandt, & Wainryb, 1991). From that perspective, being a homosexual entails a conscious decision to engage in behavior which they consider to be offensive and indecent. Leaving aside such questions as to whether homosexuality should be viewed in such normative terms or as a matter of private, personal conduct, the issue of choice is central to whether the individual may be held accountable for his or her sexual orientation. Information that would bear on that issue (e.g., findings of a substantial genetic component in determining sexual orientation) would undoubtedly impact the moral evaluation many people would make of homosexuals, even if it had no impact on their view of homosexual acts.
In sum, the moral worlds within which people act out their lives are affected by informational as well as contextual variables which enter into the evaluations people generate about particular courses of action. As with issues of domain overlap, the impact of new information regarding the causes or effects of social behaviors both complicates and enriches the role of education in preparing students to deal with social and moral issues. From a policy standpoint, we are once again confronted with the need to recognize that values education within a pluralistic, information rich, democratic society means preparing students to coordinate fundamental moral understandings of fairness and human welfare with potentially changing conventions and informational assumptions.
Understanding Inconsistencies in Individual Conduct The existence of domain overlap and differences in informational assumptions helps to account not only for disagreements between people about the moral meaning of social issues, but also helps to explain some of the inconsistencies we observe within individuals. Just as different groups of people may disagree over the moral meaning of contextualized social issues, individuals may differ in their attribution of moral meaning of actions within different contexts. In relatively unambiguous cases, deciding upon the moral or conventionally correct course of action is fairly straightforward. However, in cases where moral and conventional expectations are in conflict, where the information regarding the meaning of the action is ambiguous, or when moral concerns run counter to highly salient pragmatic or personal desires of the actor, individuals display inconsistency in their social judgments and subsequent actions. From the point of view of domain theory, such inconsistencies are the inevitable consequence of applications of a multifaceted conceptual framework in the context of varying heterogeneous social contexts. This is not a case of situational ethics. People do not make up their morality on the spot. The place of morality within a given context, however, will vary as a function of the person 's application of the totality of their social understandings and concerns to a given situation.
Reconceptualizing the Developmental Aims of Moral Education Given what we currently know about moral cognition, it is sensible to propose that the core focus of moral education be upon students conceptions of fairness, human welfare and rights, and the application of those moral understandings to issues of everyday life (Nucci, 1989). Research on the development of children 's moral understandings has shown that morality begins in early childhood with a focus upon issues of harm to the self and others. Preschool aged children are very concerned with their own safety, and understand that it is objectively wrong to hurt others. Even three - year - olds, for example, understand that it is wrong to hit and hurt someone even in the absence of a rule against hitting because, "When you get hit, it hurts, and you start to cry." Young children 's morality, however, is not yet structured by understandings of fairness as reciprocity. Fairness for the young child is often expressed in terms of personal needs and the sense that one isn 't getting one 's just desserts. "It 's not fair.", often means, "I didn 't get what I want.", or that someone 's actions caused the child to experience harm. By age 10 nearly all children have constructed an understanding of fairness as reciprocity (treating others as one would wish to be treated), but have difficulty in coordinating their sense of fairness as equality with notions of equity. Expanding the sense of fairness to include compassion, and not raw justice, and to tie that sense of compassionate justice to a conceptually compelling (logically necessary) obligation to all people and not just the members of one 's community is the developmental task of adolescence and adulthood.
Similar research on the development of children 's understandings of social convention (Turiel, 1983) indicate that constructing an understanding of why conventions matter is a long process. Unlike morality, there is nothing intuitively obvious about the functions of convention. Even though most children have learned the content of their society 's conventions by early elementary school, the purpose of such rules is not easily understood. In fact it is not until middle to late adolescence that children develop a coordinated understanding of conventions as constituent elements of social systems. It is little wonder then that children so often seem disconnected from society 's rules even when their normative content (e.g., "Don 't talk with your mouth full.") has been repeatedly presented to them.
This developmental research can be of enormous value to educators interested in developing "good" children. It provides curriculum designers and classroom teachers a framework from which to direct educational efforts at moral education which are appropriate for students at different points in development, and provides a basis from which to differentially address both the moral and conventional dimensions of social values. In doing so, educators will contribute to the development of a fair and compassionate moral citizenry that also understands and respects the need for convention. As we have just seen, however, contextualized moral judgments may often call upon the person 's ability to weigh or coordinate moral and non-moral considerations. Defining the aims of moral education in such circumstances becomes more complex. Put simply, the moral educator is not simply interested in developing the students moral and conventional understandings in such contexts, but is also interested in whether or not the student will be aware of, and prioritize the moral elements of such issues when deciding upon a course of action.
In the past this issue was dealt with rather neatly by Kohlberg 's six stage sequence of moral development (see Power et al., 1989). According to Kohlberg 's standard account, moral development moves from early stages in which moral understandings of fairness are intertwined with prudential self interest and concrete concerns for social authority, to conventional moral understandings in which morality (fairness) is intertwined with concerns for maintaining social organization defined by normative regulation. Finally, at the highest, principled stages of morality attained by a minority of the general population, morality as fairness is fully differentiated from non-moral prudential or conventional considerations, and morality serves as the basis from which the individual not only guides personal actions, but is able to evaluate the morality of the conventional normative system of society. This progression has been appealing to moral educators for several reasons. First, because the sequence was empirically based and purportedly described a universal developmental progression, this description of development offered educators an "objective" non-political basis from which to engage in moral education. Second, because the stages were presumably "content free" in that they do not pertain to particular issues, but instead refer to structures of reasoning, educators did not need to be concerned about the specific positions students take with respect to given issues. Finally, the sequence moved ultimately to a principled moral resolution of the kinds of complex issues of overlap discussed above. In other words, from the teacher 's point of view, philosophical and political conundrums were resolved by the natural logic of the developmental process.
What we have now come to understand is that the progression identified through Kohlberg 's paradigmatic research program does not adequately capture the ways in which people make socio-moral judgments, and cannot therefore, serve as the sole guide to moral education. Kohlberg described the sequence of age-related changes in the ways in which moral and non-moral (especially conventional) concerns are typically integrated in overlapping contexts. For example, Stage 4 (conventional) moral reasoning as described in the Kohlberg system reflects the emergence in middle to late adolescence of understandings in the conventional domain that social norms are constituent elements of social systems (Turiel, 1983). Although these age-typical integrations are captured by Kohlberg 's stage descriptions, they do not represent the full range of socio-moral decision-making patterns that individuals present. For example, in the process of conducting their careful and extensive research aimed at standardizing moral stage scoring, the Kohlberg group discovered that individuals at all points in development may respond to Kohlberg 's moral dilemma 's by reasoning from a perspective of either rules and authority or justice and human welfare. From the vantage point of our current understanding of the domain related heterogeneity in people 's social cognition, such within-stage variation can be accounted for by recognizing that the Kohlberg tasks generate reasoning employing knowledge from more than one conceptual system.
In moving beyond Kohlberg 's landmark research on children 's moral development, educators are both liberated in terms of how they might conceptualize the opportunities they have to engage students in moral reflection and behavior, and are also vested with greater responsibility for stimulating students to think and act in such moral terms. If in fact, children at all points in development are capable of considering moral issues from a moral perspective of justice and welfare, then it becomes important to increase the likelihood that children will "read" and prioritize the moral component of contextualized social issues, rather than simply attempting to move students toward a distal "principled" stage of moral judgment where such moral prioritization becomes a matter of course. This is not say that development doesn 't matter. Achieving principled moral understandings in the full sense of Kohlberg 's theory, presupposes a fully developed understanding of societies as social systems, an understanding that is only arrived at in middle to late adolescence (Turiel, 1983). In addition, the ability of children to "see" the morality of certain actions requires a similar, late adolescent, level of sophistication in the area of convention. For example, when we presented the issue of a person wearing a bathing suit to a funeral, many young adolescents (12 to 14 years of age) failed to see any problem. In their minds, since conventions (such as those regarding dress) were nothing other than the arbitrary dictates of authority, and since the important issue in this case was attendance at the funeral, there was nothing wrong in going to a funeral in a bathing suit. Older adolescents, however, who had constructed an understanding of conventions as constituent elements of social systems, were able to see the second-order moral implications that might arise from violating this social convention, and tended to view it as wrong to wear a bathing suit to a funeral, since within the societal framework of the funeral party, dress conveyed a sense of respect for the deceased, and sensitivity to the feelings of the grieving family (Nucci & Weber, 1991).
The point being made here is that attention to develop within moral education needs to be accompanied by attention to students ' reading of overlapping social issues. In focusing upon development within each of these conceptual (moral and conventional) frameworks, educators contribute to students ' capacity to understand and function within their social and moral worlds. However, because these systems interact in context, strictly developmental aims as set forth in the traditional Kohlbergian position need to be reconsidered. Since it has been found that students ' reasoning about such complex issues is not the result of reasoning structures within a single system, the weight that students give to moral and non-moral considerations, and not just their reasoning within the moral domain becomes of interest. For example, whether students viewed the Maya Angelou story described above in moral or conventional terms might well be as significant as whether the students were at early or advanced points in their social development. As was illustrated in the Maya Angelou excerpt, there is no guarantee that individual development alone will lead to such a reading of overlapping social issues. Unfortunately, even those individuals judged within the Kohlberg framework to be at post-conventional stages of reasoning have been found to be subject to social pressures and situational cues in their reading of the moral meaning of actions (see the discussion of the Milgram study in Turiel, 1983).
There is research which demonstrates that teachers can impact the ways in which students read social issues, and the tendencies of students to attempt to address both the moral and conventional aspects of complex social issues. In their study, Nucci & Weber (1991) divided students into three discussion groups which met for 4 weeks. During these groups, students discussed issues that were primarily moral, conventional, or overlapping both morality and convention. Throughout the course of these weekly discussions, one group was directed to treat all issues in terms of moral concerns for fairness and human welfare; a second group was directed to treat all issues as matters of social convention and social order, and the third group was directed to treat moral issues from a moral perspective, conventional issues from a conventional perspective, and to coordinate moral and conventional components of multifaceted issues. Following this intervention, students levels of moral and conventional reasoning were assessed through interviews. Students in all three groups were able to clearly respond to unambiguous moral or conventional issues. However, when asked to write their views about the values contained in an incident which had both moral and conventional features, subjects in the moral only group subordinated complex issues to moral concerns, and subjects in the convention only group subordinated complex issues to matters of norms and social organization. Only the third group spontaneously looked at both features of issues and attempted to coordinate them. As this relatively benign and short-term treatment illustrates, education can be influential in framing the meaning individuals will give to complex social situations.
Given that many of the moral issues of everyday life are enmeshed within conventionalized norms and contexts, it seems imperative that children be given the intellectual and attitudinal tools necessary to deal with these realities. What this means in practice is that students not only be given opportunities to develop their understandings and ways of reasoning about morality and convention, but that they be engaged in the more complex task of evaluating and coordinating the moral and social organizational elements of multifaceted social issues. These processes will necessarily be different at differing points in development. Adolescents with complex understandings of societies as systems will address such issues in ways that are more integrative and complex than will children. Nonetheless, meaningful discourse about the moral component of multifaceted social standards, can be addressed across a broad age range. Furthermore, the contexts in which morality and convention may overlap are not confined to the distal world of adult society, but also arise in contexts structured by the norms of children and adolescents. For example, engaging children in "seeing" the moral implications of group norms of exclusion which might arise within cliques which don 't want "geeks" as members, or in helping them to deal with masculine norms of toughness in the context of playground disputes can help them to formulate ways of constructing "societies" that are non-discriminatory, just, and safe. Thus, helping students come to terms with the difficult task of integrating what is moral with the need for social order and organization need not be seen as far afield from the straight forward business of raising "good" children who don 't lie, cheat, steal, or hurt others.
If we have learned anything over the past 30 years, it is that moral education cannot be isolated to one part of the school day, or to one context, but must be integrated within the total school experience. Bringing the approach described here to the curriculum as a whole, however, may prove unsettling for some. Engaging children in critical moral reflection about issues raised in literature, or about existing or historical social standards contained within social studies or history texts may seem threatening to those who maintain the recapitulation view of the mission of public schools to foster citizenship. From that point of view (see Ryan in Nucci, 1989), values education serves the purpose of bringing the young into the existing social order so that society may be preserved and perpetuated. Unfortunately for that perspective, pluralist democracies are dynamic, and efforts to stifle critique run counter to the very nature of the democratic society such people hope to preserve. Whether we wish to engage the resources of our schools to develop the ability of our citizenry to engage in thoughtful moral critique of our culture is a political and moral decision. As I have laid out, the knowledge base from which to construct such an approach to moral and social education is available.
Character Formation: The Moral Self
The preceding discussion has highlighted the basic reasons why moral education must attend to issues of social cognition and moral reasoning. Knowing right from wrong is more than a simple process of being aware of specific social rules, and doing the right thing is not a simple matter of putting those rules into practice. Social contexts are not fixed and, therefore, do not always lend themselves to habitual or formulaic ways of responding. Moreover, extant social rules may themselves require changes to bring them in line with morality. Reading and evaluating what is morally right, therefore, entails judgment. Being a good person, however, is more than a matter of understanding what is morally right. In philosophy a distinction is made between deontic judgments of what is morally right and aretaic judgments of responsibility which involve a commitment to act on one 's deontic judgment. In everyday language we use the term "character" to refer to the tendency to act in ways that are consistent with what one understands to be morally right. A person of good character is someone who attends to the moral implications of actions and acts in accordance with what is moral in all but the most extreme of circumstances. This everyday usage of the term character captures an important feature of what is ordinarily meant by a good person. The question for us as educators becomes one of understanding how these common sense notions of character map onto actual human psychology, and what aspects of the educative process can contribute to character formation. Unfortunately, most of the current rhetoric about character education has little to do with what people are actually like, and more to do with a political agenda that would return us to mistaken practices of the past. It is important to remember as we move forward in our efforts to engage schools in meaningful moral and character education just why character education fell out of favor in the first place.
Limitations of traditional forms of character education. Traditional character education, which had its heyday in the early part of this century, had as its central aim fostering formation of elements of the individual 's personality and value structure which would constitute socially desirable qualities or virtues. In the late 1920s a major research effort was undertaken by Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May to identify the factors that contributed to the formation of character. The design of their research was based on the reasonable premise that the first step should be to identify those individuals who possessed moral virtues. What they had expected to find was that the population of 8000 students they studied would divide up into those who displayed virtuous conduct nearly all of the time, and those who would not. To the surprise and disappointment of the researchers they discovered that few students were virtuous, and that instead, most children cheated, behaved selfishly, and lacked "self control" a large amount of the time. Virtue, according to their data, seemed to be context dependent as students cheated, or lied et cetera in some situations and not in others. As Clark Power (1989, p. 127) noted: Hartshorne and May concluded that there were no character traits per se but "specific habits learned in relationship to specific situations which have made one or another response successful."
The reference to habit by Hartshorne and May is concordant with traditional views of character formation. Since Aristotle, the development of virtue has been thought to emerge out of the progressive building up of habits. Contemporary character educators (Ryan & McLean, 1987; Wynne in Nucci, 1989) likewise rely heavily on psychological theories that emphasize punishment and reward systems to reinforce desired behavior, and systems of inculcation which are presumed to instill values and virtues in the young. It is worth remembering that in response to their findings, Hartshorne and May concluded that such traditional approaches to character education through the use of didactic teaching, exhortation, and example probably do more harm than good since such practices do not take into account the practical demands of social contexts. In other words, such rigid instruction runs counter to the evaluative and contextualized nature of moral life. By focusing solely on efforts to instill proper values and habits, such approaches fail to develop students ' capacities to make the social and moral judgments that contextualized actions require. Moreover, these rigid approaches run counter to the multifaceted and complex nature of human personality. Research on personality conducted over the past 30 years (Sarbin, 1986) has served to confirm the view of character offered by Hartshorne and May by demonstrating that people cannot be accurately described in terms of stable and general personality traits since people tend to exhibit different and seemingly contradictory aspects of themselves in different contexts.
The moral self. Findings that individual personality and character are multifaceted, complex and responsive to contextual cues, seems to comport with such common experiences as knowing people who are shy in some contexts and gregarious in others, and fits our general common sense understanding that people are not always consistent in their moral positions or actions. On the other hand, our awareness of such inconsistencies also runs counter to shared experiences that people are more or less shy than others, kinder and more trustworthy than others, and so forth. In other words, there seems to be a sense in which human personality or character is consistent Resolving this apparent contradiction in the nature of persons has been the task of contemporary personality and social psychology. Resolution with respect to issues of morality and character seems to rest on a recognition that judgments and not just habits are operating when people respond to social contexts. In this light, observed consistencies within individuals across contexts may be accounted for with reference to the ways in which individuals address moral consistencies or inconsistencies within themselves. In other words, if individual moral actions are guided by choices and not simply the result of unreflective habit, then the issue for character education rests not with inculcation and habit formation, but in understanding how it is that people judge the worth of their own actions in relation to their world view and sense of themselves as moral beings. We need to move away from the notion of character as a set of externally provided traits and habits to a view of the moral self as constructed rather than absorbed and as being updated and reconstructed continuously (Sarbin, 1986).
Self in this view is not so much an entity as it is a story or a narrative we tell ourselves in which we are the featured character. Who we are emerges as we engage the social world and attempt to provide ourselves an account of how we initiate actions (a sense of agency), and of who that agent is (a sense of identity), and who we wish that agent to be ( a combination of agency and identity). What we call the self, is a psychological construction which we form in social contexts. Before we are born, aspects of the content of who we will become are already laid out for us. Each of us lives in a particular time period, cultural and historical context, and family situation. We are given a name, assigned a gender, and live in a society in which race matters or doesn 't matter. All of which comes without our asking, and none of which comes with prepackaged understandings. Personal development, then is in part a function of how one interprets the hand one is dealt at birth, and the meanings and ways in which one enacts the different roles (e.g., boy, girl, athlete, scholar, gang member, professor, someone named Larry or Maria) which we assume in context. In a sense such social roles imply scripts, and some social learning theorists have mistakenly reduced social conduct to knowledge of social scripts. Social life, however, is not rigidly scripted, and to the extent that one can use this metaphor it would be more in the sense of a broad outline in which persons present an interpretation of a given role (e.g., mother) which they enact and modify in social context. In addition, social roles are not simply accepted by individuals, but are evaluated and modified to comport with individuals ' constructions of what a social role should be as it relates to themselves. Finally, personhood and a sense of agency requires personal choice, and individuals engage in choices which would establish their uniqueness (see Nucci & Lee in Noam & Wren, 1993).
The connection between this drammaturgical or narrative view of self, and the present discussion of character has to do with how individuals construct a view of themselves as moral beings, or what some have called the moral self (Noam & Wren, 1993), and the relation between this moral self and the more general narrative we construct which constitutes our personal identity. Self as singular, that is who we refer to when we speak about ourselves, look at our own baby pictures, and experience the sense of agency when we engage in actions, is in fact multifaceted. Those facets of who we are vary in terms of their salience or importance both as a function of the general narrative we have constructed about ourselves, and the particular situation we find ourselves in. Our "moral selves", what some have been calling character, is only a part of and functions in relation to the totality of who we are (see Blasi in Noam & Wren, 1993). When we act in context, our reading of the social situation may or may not engage our moral understandings. And when our moral understandings are involved, it may or may not be the case that the moral part of who we are is the most salient. Richard Nixon, for example, argued that being President was different from being an ordinary citizen in that the Presidency required one to act in extra- legal and amoral ways when the pragmatic self interests of the United States were at stake. In essence, Nixon 's understanding of the role of President meant that morality was secondary to political pragmatics. Implicit in his argument was the notion that Nixon 's moral self remained intact, but on hold while he was acting from pragmatics. We see similar forms of argument in the self reports of adolescents who engage in aggressive acts to steal from others (Guerra, Nucci, & Huesmann, 1994). Often these adolescents explain their actions (e.g., hitting a woman to steal her purse) in means - end terms in which the moral consequences of their actions (hurting another person) are placed well below the pragmatic goal of obtaining goods. While these adolescents will describe themselves in moral terms (e.g., fair, respectful) in relation to general dealings with people , especially family members, they define their actions in very "business" like terms (e.g., taking care of business) when describing their actions on the street.
Character and the moral self. In Blasi 's (Noam, 1993) work on the moral self, he makes the point that morality may or may not be a central element of the general narrative we construct about who we are. In other words, morality may or may not be a salient issue in constructing one 's personal identity . The fact that virtually all children construct basic moral understandings about fairness and human welfare does not mean that being a person who acts on that knowledge in relation to others is necessarily an important part of how one self defines. For the adolescents described above, or for some businessmen for that matter, being moral may not be as integral to their self definition as are other facets of their personal identities (e.g., gang member, successful businessman). According to Blasi, the experience of "guilt" or moral responsibility emerges in those situations in which one acts counter to what one knows to be morally right only for those for whom morality is an integral part of personal identity. In other words, from Blasi 's work, we can infer that a central feature of what we mean by moral character is the degree to which being a moral person attains salience as a part of one 's self definition. Acting in consonance with one 's deontic moral judgments is for someone of "good" character important for that person 's sense of intrapersonal coherence in the vast majority of contexts.
From an educational standpoint this means that character formation is not a curricular issue in the usual sense of a course or program designed to teach a particular content. Character emerges from the more general individual environment interactions from which students construct their sense of themselves. There is no simplistic model or formula for "building" character. And, as much as those of us who each year brave Chicago 's character building Winters would like to believe, no specific set of experiences that lead to good or strong character. Schools contribute to character to the degree to which they constitute environments conducive to more general social and emotional development, and more specifically moral environments in which students are treated fairly and with respect, and which convey and enact through teacher behavior and school policy a general climate in which morality (as opposed to arbitrary adult authority) is valued. Having said that, there are some policies and practices which schools can engage in that raise the likelihood that schooling will contribute to students moral development and character. I will end this chapter with a brief summary of some of those policies and practices. Before doing so, however, I think it is important to recognize the limitations for public policy of any attempt to address larger social issues of crime or violence solely through educational efforts designed to alter the morality and character of individuals.
The limitations of reliance on individual responsibility. Much of what we see in present day society by way of criminal activity, and juvenile crime in particular needs to be understood as a rational response to objective social conditions rather than simply a lack of morality or character of individuals. A study which we (Sapiro & Nucci, 1991) conducted in Brazil of adolescents ' and young adults ' conceptions of everyday forms of corruption is highly instructive. Nearly all of our young subjects across social classes and economic levels engaged in what they considered to be corrupt social practices (e.g., paying a police officer to avoid a ticket, paying for physician services without receipt to enable the physician to avoid taxes and charge a lower fee) at least some of the time. When asked to evaluate these practices nearly all of our subjects argued that they were wrong. However, lower class subjects irrespective of educational level were five times as likely as upper middle class young people to state that engaging in such practices was justified in the face of an overwhelmingly corrupt social system. In contrast upper-middle class university students were more than twice as likely as lower class subjects irrespective of educational level to argue that it was important to not engage in such practices in order to offer individual resistance to the corrupt social system and thereby change it. What is instructive for us at the policy level is to recognize that these observed class and educational differences in orientation to the immorality of corrupt public behavior did not reflect a difference in the morality of individuals (nearly all subjects saw the acts as objectively wrong), but rather social class differences in the sense of political and social empowerment to effect change in the objective social situation, and the belief on the part of the poor and uneducated that such actions constituted a rational form of self protection from victimization by the general system. While the US. is not Brazil, the lesson to be drawn is that we should not expect school approaches to moral and character education aimed at individual responsibility to completely compensate for broader changes that need to take place with respect to social policies which impact America 's poor and disenfranchised.
Implications for Educational Practice
In conclusion, let me summarize some of the main points of this chapter and indicate some of the implications of recent research for educational practices and policies with respect to moral development and character formation. These practices divide more or less into those which concern academic or intellectual content and reflection, and school policies or practices which affect general school climate or student activities. I begin first with academic practices.
• The focus of moral education should be on students ' concerns for and conceptions of fairness and the welfare of others. These moral issues are treated by children and adults as universalizable, and as independent of the specific norms and rules of their particular culture. Morality is distinct from social conventions which are the agreed upon social norms particular to social or cultural groups. This definition of morality is consistent with individual psychology and may serve as the basis for a common and shared values focus for moral education.
• Educational practices should be coordinated with student development. While young children have an intuitive sense of morality, they do not have fully developed understandings of fairness. Nor do they have an understanding of the function of conventions in organizing social systems. For educators to be effective in fostering students ' moral and social growth they need to match educational practices with student developmental level.
• Educational practices should take into account the fact that morality and convention develop out of qualitatively differing types of social experiences. Morality deals with justice and human welfare. Thus, children 's moral concepts are fostered by school experiences that focus on such issues, engage children in reflection upon such concerns, and ask them to resolve genuine moral problems in ways that are the most fair and compassionate for all parties. Issues of convention, on the other hand, deal with concerns for social organization. Thus, children 's understandings of the meaning and importance of convention emerge out of efforts to come to agreed upon norms for coordinating the actions of members of a group. In daily school experience this emerges in the context of discourse over dress codes, rules for hand raising and the like. In the curriculum these issues emerge as children attempt to understand the meaning or function of different conventional norms throughout history, or within differing cultural groups. Specific suggestions for what is termed "domain appropriate education" are provided in Nucci and Weber (1991).
• Moral development is fostered by moral discussion and moral problem solving. Moral reasoning develops when students recognize inconsistencies and inadequacies in their moral positions. One of the most effective ways to bring this about is through small group discussions which are characterized by transactive discourse. In such discussions, students are asked to arrive at a resolution of a moral problem in such a way that it would be most fair to all parties. In the process students must listen carefully to what group members are saying and come to terms with positions at variance from their own. Discussions can be stimulated by readings as well as actual events, and are not limited to particular educational subject matter.
• Moral discussion may also make use of moral exemplars. Traditional character education has generally included reading literature about morally exemplary figures as an important way to provide students with moral role models. While over-reliance on this approach is unjustified, there is a place for providing students with opportunities to consider the thoughts and actions of exemplary figures such as Martin Luther King, and morally charged situations from literature as way to allow students to consider how they might construct their own sense of self with respect to morality. What is critical is that students be actively engaged in constructing a connection between themselves and the role model. Otherwise, such exercises are a waste of everyone 's time.
• Opportunities for self reflection can be used to foster moral character. Stimulating students to raise the salience of their "moral self" and integrate it within their overall identity can often be accomplished through classroom activities and assignments which ask students to reflect upon who they are and wish to become. While this can be misused in futile attempts to generate student guilt, it can be productive when students view the activity as serving their own intrinsic interest in learning about themselves. Teachers can encourage students to address inconsistencies and lacunae within their views of self which can help focus student attention on the moral content of their character. This has been successfully used not only as a vehicle for self examination, but also as a context within which students can develop literacy and communication skills.
• . Moral discussion is most effective when it concerns actual student behavior or issues. Student motivation and attention is heightened when the moral problems they are asked to address concern real life issues, and when the consequences of their decisions have real impact on subsequent policies or actions. This approach also engages students in role enactment related to their construction of a sense of self. Thus, this approach touches not only upon deontic judgments, but aretaic judgments of moral responsibility and character. A widely studied approach which makes use of this technique is the "Just Community" (Power et. al., 1989).
• Moral concerns are often embedded within conventionalized practices. Since moral actions take place within cultural contexts, many moral issues are embedded within, or overlap with morality. This has the following educational ramifications. o Concerns for Fostering Moral development Should Include Concerns for Fostering Moral Sensitivity. Because issues of morality are often embedded within existing conventional practices, the moral meaning of such practices may be overlooked. If schools are committed to moral education, then one function of such education should be to heighten the likelihood that students will attend to the moral consequences of conforming to the norms of the existing social order. One way to do this is to present students with issues which involve an overlap between morality and convention, and ask them to consider both the moral and conventional aspects of such issues. Examples of this type of approach are provided in Nucci and Weber (1991). o Moral Educators Need to be Prepared to Deal with Controversy. Because issues of overlap often involve established conventional practices, the potential unfairness or harm caused by such practices may be overlooked by the majority of society, or may be important to the interests of particular social groups. A moral dilemma faced by educators and policy makers is whether and to what extent to engage students in consideration of such controversial matters. Engaging such issues prepares students to contribute to the moral growth of society. However, schools which take on such issues risk alienating their constituent base. Balancing the educator 's moral duty to enable students to deal with the contradictions inherent in any complex value system, with the educator 's role as an agent of that very society defines the core moral dilemma faced by any teacher
Issues of School Climate and Student Activity
• General school climate should foster fairness and respect for others. Moral development and character education are not limited to discrete academic subject areas, but are infused throughout school life. The school climate should be one characterized by mutual respect for all persons. School rules should be ones which protect student safety, and promote respect for others. Enforcement of school policies should be characterized by firmness, fairness, and flexibility. School authority should not be characterized by harshness or intolerance.
• Provide students with opportunities to develop social problem solving skills. While not a component of moral development per se, knowledge of conflict resolution, and social problem solving allows students greater ability to engage in non-confrontational peer interactions which allow for dialogue and construction of moral orientations toward others. This works best when students are encouraged to use these skills in resolving actual conflicts while at school (e.g., on the playground).
• Students should be given opportunities to assume roles that entail moral responsibility. Much of school life requires little more of students than passive obedience. Opportunities for students to build a sense of themselves as moral beings, such as actively participating in meeting the needs of their own school and local community if coupled with opportunities for meaningful reflection can provide content for students to construct a moral sense of self.
Parts of Research Paper
By Shane Hall, eHow Contributor
Research papers in most academic disciplines generally follow the same format that includes similar parts, although this may vary depending on such factors as field of study and editorial style.
Other People Are Reading
• Instructions for Writing a Research Paper
• About the Four Parts of a Research Paper
1. Function o The rationale for including similar parts in research papers is so that readers know exactly where the find the information they need, regardless of the type of paper.
Main Parts o In general, research papers open with a thesis statement or research question. A background section usually follows, in which the author summarizes the current literature that relates to the paper 's topic. The next section is the main body of the paper, in which the author presents evidence and analysis. o Sponsored Links
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On the fly XML to PDF conversion, supports Visual Design. Try now! www.ecrion.com Conclusion o After presenting the main body of the paper, the author summarizes the effects or findings in the conclusion. The research paper ends with a bibliography of references used.
Styles
o There are different styles for doing the references and bibliography parts of a research paper. Two of the most commonly used editorial styles are that of the Modern Languages Association (MLA), often used for research papers on language and literature, and that of the American Psychological Association (APA), generally used for research papers in the sciences.
Methodology
o In addition to the sections described above, many research papers, especially scientific papers, include a methodology section. This details the research design, data collection and analysis methods.

You may have finished the best research project on earth but, if you do not make an interesting and well laid out paper, then nobody is going to take your findings seriously.
The main thing to remember with any research paper is that it is based upon an hourglass structure. It starts with general information, as you conduct a literature review, and becomes specific as you nail down a research problem and hypothesis.
Finally, it again becomes more general as you try to apply your findings to the world at general.
Whilst there are a few differences between the various disciplines, with some fields placing more of an emphasis upon certain parts than others do, there is a basic underlying structure.
These steps are the building blocks of constructing a good research paper. This section covers laying out the parts of a research paper, including the various experimental methods and designs.
The principles for literature review and essay of all types follow the same basic principles.
 Abstract
 Introduction
 Method
 Results
 Discussion
 Conclusion
 Reference List
The Introduction
For many students, writing the introduction is the first part of the process, setting down the direction of the paper and laying out exactly what the research paper is trying to achieve.
For others, the introduction is the last thing written, acting as a quick summary of the paper. As long as you have planned a good structure for the parts of a research paper, both methods are equally good and it is a matter of preference.
A good introduction generally consists of three distinct parts, starting with
1. a general presentation of the research problem.
2. You should then lay out exactly what you are trying to achieve with this particular research project.
3. stating your own position.
Ideally, you should try to give each section its own paragraph, but short or long papers will vary.
1) The General Presentation
Look at the benefits to be gained by the research or why the problem has not been solved. Perhaps nobody has thought about it, or maybe previous research threw up some interesting leads that the previous researchers did not follow up.
Another researcher may have uncovered some interesting trends, but did not manage to reach the significance level, due to experimental error or small sample sizes.
2) Purpose and the Exact Direction of the Paper
The research problem does not have to be a statement, but must at least imply what you are trying to find.
Many writers prefer to place the thesis statement or hypothesis here, which is perfectly acceptable, but most include it in the last sentences of the introduction, to give the reader a fuller picture.
3) A Statement of Intent From the Writer
The idea is that somebody will be able to gain an overall view of the paper without needing to read the whole thing. Literature reviews are time-consuming enough, so giving the reader an idea saves their time.
In this section, you look to give a background to the research, including any relevant information learned during your literature review. You are also trying to explain why you chose this area of research, attempting to highlight why it is necessary.The second part should state the purpose of the experiment and should include the research problem, as a part of focusing the introduction towards the thesis statement or hypothesis.The third part should give the reader a quick summary of the form that the parts of the research paper are going to take and should include a condensed version of the discussion.
The Method
This should be the easiest part of the paper to write, as it is a run-down of the exact design and methodology used to perform the research. Obviously, the exact methodology varies depending upon the exact field and type of experiment.
There is a big methodological difference between the apparatus based research of the physical sciences and the methods and observation methods of social sciences. However, the key is to ensure that another researcher should be able to replicate the experiment exactly, whilst keeping the section concise.
You can assume that anybody reading your paper is familiar with all of the basic methods, so try not to explain every last detail. For example, an organic chemist or biochemist will be familiar with chromatography, so you only need to highlight the type of equipment and should not explain the process in detail.
In the case of a survey, if you have too many questions to cover in the method, you can always include a copy of the questionnaire in the appendix. In this case, make sure that you refer to it.
The Results
This is probably the most variable part of any research paper, and depends upon the results and aims of the experiment.
For quantitative research, it is a presentation of the numerical results and data, whereas for qualitative research it should be a broader discussion of trends, without going into too much detail.
For research generating a lot of results, then it is better to include tables or graphs of the analyzed data and leave the raw data in the appendix, so that a researcher can follow up and check your calculations.
A commentary is essential to linking the results together, rather than displaying isolated and unconnected charts, figures and findings.
It can be quite difficulty to find a good balance between the results and the discussion section, because some findings, especially in a quantitative or descriptive experiment, will fall into a grey area. As long as you not repeat yourself to often, then there should be no major problem.
It is best to try to find a middle course, where you give a general overview of the data and then expand upon it in the discussion - you should try to keep your own opinions and interpretations out of the results section, saving that for the discussion.
The Discussion
This is where you elaborate upon your findings, and explain what you found, adding your own personal interpretations.
Ideally, you should link the discussion back to the introduction, addressing each initial point individually.
It is important to try to make sure that every piece of information in your discussion is directly related to the thesis statement, or you risk clouding your findings. You can expand upon the topic in the conclusion - remembering the hourglass principle.
The Conclusion
The conclusion is where you build upon your discussion and try to refer your findings to other research and to the world at large.
In a short research paper, it may be a paragraph or two, or practically non-existent.
In a dissertation, it may well be the most important part of the entire paper - not only does it describe the results and discussion in detail, it emphasizes the importance of the results in the field, and ties it in with the previous research.
Some research papers require a recommendations section, postulating that further directions of the research, as well as highlighting how any flaws affected the results. In this case, you should suggest any improvements that could be made to the research design.
The Reference List
No paper is complete without a reference list, documenting all of the sources that you used for your research. This should be laid out according to APA, MLA or other specified format, allowing any interested researcher to follow up on the research.
One habit that is becoming more common, especially with online papers, is to include a reference to your paper on the final page. Lay this out in MLA, APA and Chicago format, allowing anybody referencing your paper to copy and paste it.

Read more: Parts of a Research Paper - How to Create the Structure for Papers
Writing Research Papers
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. --- Gene Fowler
A major goal of this course is the development of effective technical writing skills. To help you become an accomplished writer, you will prepare several research papers based upon the studies completed in lab. Our research papers are not typical "lab reports." In a teaching lab a lab report might be nothing more than answers to a set of questions. Such an assignment hardly represents the kind of writing you might be doing in your eventual career.
Written and oral communications skills are probably the most universal qualities sought by graduate and professional schools as well as by employers. You alone are responsible for developing such skills to a high level.
Resources for learning technical writing
Before you begin your first writing assignment, please consult all of the following resources, in order to gain the most benefit from the experience.
• General form of a typical research article
• Specific guidelines (if any) for the assignment – see the writeups on individual lab studies
• McMillan, VE. "Writing Papers in the Biological Sciences, Third Ed." New York: Bedford/St. Martin 's, 2001. ISBN 0-312-25857-7 (REQUIRED for Bioc 211, 311, recommended for other science courses that include writing)
• Writing portfolio examples (pdf)
As you polish up your writing skills please make use of the following resources
• Instructor feedback on previous assignments
• Common errors in student research papers
• Selected writing rules (somewhat less serious than the other resources)
For Biosciences majors the general guidelines apply to future course work, as can be seen by examining the guidelines for the advanced experimental sciences research paper (Bioc 311).
General form of a research paper
An objective of organizing a research paper is to allow people to read your work selectively. When I research a topic, I may be interested in just the methods, a specific result, the interpretation, or perhaps I just want to see a summary of the paper to determine if it is relevant to my study. To this end, many journals require the following sections, submitted in the order listed, each section to start on a new page. There are variations of course. Some journals call for a combined results and discussion, for example, or include materials and methods after the body of the paper. The well known journal Science does away with separate sections altogether, except for the abstract.
Your papers are to adhere to the form and style required for the Journal of Biological Chemistry, requirements that are shared by many journals in the life sciences.
General style
Specific editorial requirements for submission of a manuscript will always supercede instructions in these general guidelines.
To make a paper readable
• Print or type using a 12 point standard font, such as Times, Geneva, Bookman, Helvetica, etc.
• Text should be double spaced on 8 1/2" x 11" paper with 1 inch margins, single sided
• Number pages consecutively
• Start each new section on a new page
• Adhere to recommended page limits
Mistakes to avoid
• Placing a heading at the bottom of a page with the following text on the next page (insert a page break!)
• Dividing a table or figure - confine each figure/table to a single page
• Submitting a paper with pages out of order
In all sections of your paper
• Use normal prose including articles ("a", "the," etc.)
• Stay focused on the research topic of the paper
• Use paragraphs to separate each important point (except for the abstract)
• Indent the first line of each paragraph
• Present your points in logical order
• Use present tense to report well accepted facts - for example, 'the grass is green '
• Use past tense to describe specific results - for example, 'When weed killer was applied, the grass was brown '
• Avoid informal wording, don 't address the reader directly, and don 't use jargon, slang terms, or superlatives
• Avoid use of superfluous pictures - include only those figures necessary to presenting results
Title Page
Select an informative title as illustrated in the examples in your writing portfolio example package. Include the name(s) and address(es) of all authors, and date submitted. "Biology lab #1" would not be an informative title, for example.
Abstract
The summary should be two hundred words or less. See the examples in the writing portfolio package.
General intent
An abstract is a concise single paragraph summary of completed work or work in progress. In a minute or less a reader can learn the rationale behind the study, general approach to the problem, pertinent results, and important conclusions or new questions.
Writing an abstract
Write your summary after the rest of the paper is completed. After all, how can you summarize something that is not yet written? Economy of words is important throughout any paper, but especially in an abstract. However, use complete sentences and do not sacrifice readability for brevity. You can keep it concise by wording sentences so that they serve more than one purpose. For example, "In order to learn the role of protein synthesis in early development of the sea urchin, newly fertilized embryos were pulse-labeled with tritiated leucine, to provide a time course of changes in synthetic rate, as measured by total counts per minute (cpm)." This sentence provides the overall question, methods, and type of analysis, all in one sentence. The writer can now go directly to summarizing the results.
Summarize the study, including the following elements in any abstract. Try to keep the first two items to no more than one sentence each.
• Purpose of the study - hypothesis, overall question, objective
• Model organism or system and brief description of the experiment
• Results, including specific data - if the results are quantitative in nature, report quantitative data; results of any statistical analysis shoud be reported
• Important conclusions or questions that follow from the experiment(s)
Style:
• Single paragraph, and concise
• As a summary of work done, it is always written in past tense
• An abstract should stand on its own, and not refer to any other part of the paper such as a figure or table
• Focus on summarizing results - limit background information to a sentence or two, if absolutely necessary
• What you report in an abstract must be consistent with what you reported in the paper
• Corrrect spelling, clarity of sentences and phrases, and proper reporting of quantities (proper units, significant figures) are just as important in an abstract as they are anywhere else
Introduction
Your introductions should not exceed two pages (double spaced, typed). See the examples in the writing portfolio package.
General intent
The purpose of an introduction is to aquaint the reader with the rationale behind the work, with the intention of defending it. It places your work in a theoretical context, and enables the reader to understand and appreciate your objectives.
Writing an introduction
The abstract is the only text in a research paper to be written without using paragraphs in order to separate major points. Approaches vary widely, however for our studies the following approach can produce an effective introduction.
• Describe the importance (significance) of the study - why was this worth doing in the first place? Provide a broad context.
• Defend the model - why did you use this particular organism or system? What are its advantages? You might comment on its suitability from a theoretical point of view as well as indicate practical reasons for using it.
• Provide a rationale. State your specific hypothesis(es) or objective(s), and describe the reasoning that led you to select them.
• Very briefy describe the experimental design and how it accomplished the stated objectives.
Style:
• Use past tense except when referring to established facts. After all, the paper will be submitted after all of the work is completed.
• Organize your ideas, making one major point with each paragraph. If you make the four points listed above, you will need a minimum of four paragraphs.
• Present background information only as needed in order support a position. The reader does not want to read everything you know about a subject.
• State the hypothesis/objective precisely - do not oversimplify.
• As always, pay attention to spelling, clarity and appropriateness of sentences and phrases.
Materials and Methods
There is no specific page limit, but a key concept is to keep this section as concise as you possibly can. People will want to read this material selectively. The reader may only be interested in one formula or part of a procedure. Materials and methods may be reported under separate subheadings within this section or can be incorporated together.
General intent
This should be the easiest section to write, but many students misunderstand the purpose. The objective is to document all specialized materials and general procedures, so that another individual may use some or all of the methods in another study or judge the scientific merit of your work. It is not to be a step by step description of everything you did, nor is a methods section a set of instructions. In particular, it is not supposed to tell a story. By the way, your notebook should contain all of the information that you need for this section.
Writing a materials and methods section
Materials:
• Describe materials separately only if the study is so complicated that it saves space this way.
• Include specialized chemicals, biological materials, and any equipment or supplies that are not commonly found in laboratories.
• Do not include commonly found supplies such as test tubes, pipet tips, beakers, etc., or standard lab equipment such as centrifuges, spectrophotometers, pipettors, etc.
• If use of a specific type of equipment, a specific enzyme, or a culture from a particular supplier is critical to the success of the experiment, then it and the source should be singled out, otherwise no.
• Materials may be reported in a separate paragraph or else they may be identified along with your procedures.
• In biosciences we frequently work with solutions - refer to them by name and describe completely, including concentrations of all reagents, and pH of aqueous solutions, solvent if non-aqueous.
Methods:
• See the examples in the writing portfolio package
• Report the methodology (not details of each procedure that employed the same methodology)
• Describe the mehodology completely, including such specifics as temperatures, incubation times, etc.
• To be concise, present methods under headings devoted to specific procedures or groups of procedures
• Generalize - report how procedures were done, not how they were specifically performed on a particular day. For example, report "samples were diluted to a final concentration of 2 mg/ml protein;" don 't report that "135 microliters of sample one was diluted with 330 microliters of buffer to make the protein concentration 2 mg/ml." Always think about what would be relevant to an investigator at another institution, working on his/her own project.
• If well documented procedures were used, report the procedure by name, perhaps with reference, and that 's all. For example, the Bradford assay is well known. You need not report the procedure in full - just that you used a Bradford assay to estimate protein concentration, and identify what you used as a standard. The same is true for the SDS-PAGE method, and many other well known procedures in biology and biochemistry.
Style:
• It is awkward or impossible to use active voice when documenting methods without using first person, which would focus the reader 's attention on the investigator rather than the work. Therefore when writing up the methods most authors use third person passive voice.
• Use normal prose in this and in every other section of the paper – avoid informal lists, and use complete sentences.
What to avoid
• Materials and methods are not a set of instructions.
• Omit all explanatory information and background - save it for the discussion.
• Omit information that is irrelevant to a third party, such as what color ice bucket you used, or which individual logged in the data.
Results
The page length of this section is set by the amount and types of data to be reported. Continue to be concise, using figures and tables, if appropriate, to present results most effectively. See recommendations for content, below.
General intent
The purpose of a results section is to present and illustrate your findings. Make this section a completely objective report of the results, and save all interpretation for the discussion.
Writing a results section
IMPORTANT: You must clearly distinguish material that would normally be included in a research article from any raw data or other appendix material that would not be published. In fact, such material should not be submitted at all unless requested by the instructor.
Content
• Summarize your findings in text and illustrate them, if appropriate, with figures and tables.
• In text, describe each of your results, pointing the reader to observations that are most relevant.
• Provide a context, such as by describing the question that was addressed by making a particular observation.
• Describe results of control experiments and include observations that are not presented in a formal figure or table, if appropriate.
• Analyze your data, then prepare the analyzed (converted) data in the form of a figure (graph), table, or in text form.
What to avoid
• Do not discuss or interpret your results, report background information, or attempt to explain anything.
• Never include raw data or intermediate calculations in a research paper.
• Do not present the same data more than once.
• Text should complement any figures or tables, not repeat the same information.
• Please do not confuse figures with tables - there is a difference.
Style
• As always, use past tense when you refer to your results, and put everything in a logical order.
• In text, refer to each figure as "figure 1," "figure 2," etc. ; number your tables as well (see the reference text for details)
• Place figures and tables, properly numbered, in order at the end of the report (clearly distinguish them from any other material such as raw data, standard curves, etc.)
• If you prefer, you may place your figures and tables appropriately within the text of your results section.
Figures and tables
• Either place figures and tables within the text of the result, or include them in the back of the report (following Literature Cited) - do one or the other
• If you place figures and tables at the end of the report, make sure they are clearly distinguished from any attached appendix materials, such as raw data
• Regardless of placement, each figure must be numbered consecutively and complete with caption (caption goes under the figure)
• Regardless of placement, each table must be titled, numbered consecutively and complete with heading (title with description goes above the table)
• Each figure and table must be sufficiently complete that it could stand on its own, separate from text
Discussion
Journal guidelines vary. Space is so valuable in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, that authors are asked to restrict discussions to four pages or less, double spaced, typed. That works out to one printed page. While you are learning to write effectively, the limit will be extended to five typed pages. If you practice economy of words, that should be plenty of space within which to say all that you need to say.
General intent
The objective here is to provide an interpretation of your results and support for all of your conclusions, using evidence from your experiment and generally accepted knowledge, if appropriate. The significance of findings should be clearly described.
Writing a discussion
Interpret your data in the discussion in appropriate depth. This means that when you explain a phenomenon you must describe mechanisms that may account for the observation. If your results differ from your expectations, explain why that may have happened. If your results agree, then describe the theory that the evidence supported. It is never appropriate to simply state that the data agreed with expectations, and let it drop at that.
• Decide if each hypothesis is supported, rejected, or if you cannot make a decision with confidence. Do not simply dismiss a study or part of a study as "inconclusive."
• Research papers are not accepted if the work is incomplete. Draw what conclusions you can based upon the results that you have, and treat the study as a finished work
• You may suggest future directions, such as how the experiment might be modified to accomplish another objective.
• Explain all of your observations as much as possible, focusing on mechanisms.
• Decide if the experimental design adequately addressed the hypothesis, and whether or not it was properly controlled.
• Try to offer alternative explanations if reasonable alternatives exist.
• One experiment will not answer an overall question, so keeping the big picture in mind, where do you go next? The best studies open up new avenues of research. What questions remain?
• Recommendations for specific papers will provide additional suggestions.
Style:
• When you refer to information, distinguish data generated by your own studies from published information or from information obtained from other students (verb tense is an important tool for accomplishing that purpose).
• Refer to work done by specific individuals (including yourself) in past tense.
• Refer to generally accepted facts and principles in present tense. For example, "Doofus, in a 1989 survey, found that anemia in basset hounds was correlated with advanced age. Anemia is a condition in which there is insufficient hemoglobin in the blood."
The biggest mistake that students make in discussions is to present a superficial interpretation that more or less re-states the results. It is necessary to suggest why results came out as they did, focusing on the mechanisms behind the observations.
Literature Cited
Please note that in the introductory laboratory course, you will not be required to properly document sources of all of your information. One reason is that your major source of information is this website, and websites are inappropriate as primary sources. Second, it is problematic to provide a hundred students with equal access to potential reference materials. You may nevertheless find outside sources, and you should cite any articles that the instructor provides or that you find for yourself.
List all literature cited in your paper, in alphabetical order, by first author. In a proper research paper, only primary literature is used (original research articles authored by the original investigators). Be cautious about using web sites as references - anyone can put just about anything on a web site, and you have no sure way of knowing if it is truth or fiction. If you are citing an on line journal, use the journal citation (name, volume, year, page numbers). Some of your papers may not require references, and if that is the case simply state that "no references were consulted."

Cited: Please note that in the introductory laboratory course, you will not be required to properly document sources of all of your information. One reason is that your major source of information is this website, and websites are inappropriate as primary sources. Second, it is problematic to provide a hundred students with equal access to potential reference materials. You may nevertheless find outside sources, and you should cite any articles that the instructor provides or that you find for yourself. List all literature cited in your paper, in alphabetical order, by first author. In a proper research paper, only primary literature is used (original research articles authored by the original investigators). Be cautious about using web sites as references - anyone can put just about anything on a web site, and you have no sure way of knowing if it is truth or fiction. If you are citing an on line journal, use the journal citation (name, volume, year, page numbers). Some of your papers may not require references, and if that is the case simply state that "no references were consulted."