Moral Learning
As moral educators we are more used to teaching others and researching their learning and moral development than reflecting on and writing formally about our own moral learning. We are not just professionals with an interest and supposedly some expertise in morality and education, we also have gendered and culturally differentiated personal and professional lives, in which there are moral issues, puzzles, and conflicts. We are situated in diverse political and institutional contexts whilst participating in an interdisciplinary professional field and interacting in an increasingly globalised world. How do we integrate the personal, professional and political in our moral learning? In this book celebrating the Journal of Moral Education’s 40th anniversary, 15 invited contributors, at different stages in their careers, from a range of disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, and from around the world, offer their academic, analytical and autobiographical reflections. Through their stories, narratives, analyses, questions and concerns, and across many diverse topics central to moral education, we see how they each confront their own moral learning—personally, professionally, and politically. This book offers insights from formative experiences and ongoing issues and challenges to suggest how all educators might take more account of the interrelation of the personal, professional and political in moral teaching and learning.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Moral Education.
Monica J. Taylor had a career at the National Foundation for Educational Research in England and Wales (1971-2002), was Editor of the Journal of Moral Education (1976-2011), and is currently a Research Associate at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK. She has published widely on moral, values and citizenship education, race and ethnicity and has been active in establishing moral education networks nationally and internationally.