Developing and testing a scale of moral thinking and communication (MTC) functioning: a preliminary study and its implications for moral development and education

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a scale assessing students’ moral thinking and communication (MTC) functioning as well as to explore the implications for moral development and education. The rationale of MTC functioning, including interaction of four independent competencies: moral awareness, moral judgement, moral discourse, and moral decision-making, is primarily adapted from L. Kohlberg’s theory, Neo-Kohlbergian theory, J. Habermas’s and K.-O. Apel’s discourse ethics, and L. Hinman’s ethical pluralism. There were two studies in the development of the measure. The resulting instrument contained four moral dilemmas differing by a focus on micro-moral and macro-moral levels. Findings from the studies indicated the MTC scale has acceptable psychometric properties and describe Taiwanese students as attending to the difficult problems of integrating local and international cultural norms. Additionally, the measure provides a detailed picture of students’ moral thinking and communication functioning. These results are discussed in terms of implications for moral theory and assessment of moral education.

Keywords:

• Moral thinking and communication functioning
• Taiwanese students
• scale development

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank APJE anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions. Finally, we would like to express my appreciation to all the participants, people consulted and research assistants in this study.

Notes

1. The formula of Internal consistency reliability is:Cronbach’s alpha = m(Meanr)/[1 + (Meanr)(m-1)] (where Meanr = the mean of all inter-coder correlations for a given variable and m = the number of coders) (Neuendorf, 2002, p. 166).