Fostering moral understanding, moral inquiry & moral habits through philosophy in schools: a Deweyian analysis of Australia’s Ethical Understanding curriculum

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a Deweyian analysis of Australia’s Ethical Understanding General Capability curriculum documents, which outline a promising moral education curriculum for students aged 4–17 years. The moral development of students has long been identified as a key aim of schooling. However, schools seldom have time for dedicated moral education classes. Furthermore, the two most prevalent approaches to moral education have been subject to considerable criticism: 1) ‘traditional’ character education, which has been criticised for indoctrinating students; and 2) ‘progressive’ inquiry based approaches that are often criticised for promoting moral subjectivism. Australia’s national curriculum offers a promising alternative, named the Ethical Understanding General Capability. It integrates moral education into existing school subjects. Drawing on the ideas of John Dewey, I argue that Australia’s Ethical Understanding curriculum avoids both indoctrination and subjectivism and aims to foster the three key elements of moral education: 1) understanding of moral issues and concepts; 2) moral inquiry skills; and 3) moral habits and values (e.g. being honest and caring). The Philosophy for Children program (P4C), which is heavily influenced by Dewey’s ideas, provides practical methods for implementing the Ethical Understanding curriculum in diverse subject areas at both the primary and secondary levels of schooling.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral education
• Ethical Understanding general capability
• John Dewey
• the Australian curriculum
• philosophy for children

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The other six general capabilities are: Critical and Creative Thinking; Literacy; Numeracy; Information and Communication Technology Capability; Personal and Social Capability; and Intercultural Understanding. While there are various connections between the seven capabilities, in this paper I only have space to examine the Ethical Understanding general capability.

2. An exploration of the later is also important and could best be examined through empirical research, which is beyond the scope of this paper. The document and conceptual analysis undertaken here is intended to help frame such future empirical research.

3. Teachers of this ethics program were not actually employed within the schools. Rather, they were vetted, trained members of the public who volunteered to teach the ethics program. Many did not have formal teaching qualifications and they only received two days of training.

4. This might be the reason ACARA uses the more narrow term ‘moral values and attributes’ even though, in actual fact, values and attributes are just types of habits.

5. The Australian television documentary, ‘Religion in the Classroom’ (SBS, 2010) includes footage of this P4C based ethics program in practice, as well as an interview with Philip Cam. It can be viewed online at: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/tvepisode/religion-in-the-classroom .

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Advancing Women’s Research Success Grant, Monash University [N/A].

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Bleazby

Dr Jennifer Bleazby is a philosopher of education in the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia. She is the author of Social Reconstruction Learning: Dualism, Dewey and Philosophy in Schools (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of Theory and Philosophy in Educational Research: Methodological Dialogues (Routledge, 2018).