Moral Development in College Students

Researchers and educators have found that college students, who are entering young adulthood, are experiencing radical transitions to become independent individuals. Studies in moral psychology suggest that developmental changes occurring during this transitional period likely impact people’s flourishing in social and civic domains in the long term. Hence, educators working in higher education may need to understand moral development among college students well to facilitate the students’ positive youth development in their instruction and mentorship. In this chapter, I will overview theories and research findings about moral development among college students while considering their educational implications. Furthermore, I will suggest several educational strategies to promote ethical and positive development based on evidence to inform higher education instructors interested in promoting ethical development and flourishing in college students. At the beginning of the chapter, I will briefly review existing theories and empirical findings about moral development in various functional domains during late adolescence and young adulthood, where most college students are situated, for readers’ information. First, the classical theory of moral development focusing on moral judgment and reasoning, the (Neo-)Kohlbergian theory will be reviewed. According to this model, college students are experiencing the formation and consolidation of the postconventional schema, which is required for a sophisticated moral judgment to deal with complicated socio-moral issues. Second, I will examine recent advances in research on moral development during young adulthood that approach ethical development and functioning as multifaceted phenomena. These will include studies on positive youth development in moral domains (e.g., civic purpose development involving concerns on the beyond-the-self beings) and practical wisdom (phronesis) development. These novel research findings will provide integrative and comprehensive theoretical models of ethical functioning and development in college students. Given the classical developmental model could not completely address the gap between judgment and behavior, the up-to-date theories mentioned above will shed light on understanding the mechanism of ethical motivation and behavior for improving education. In the next part of the chapter, I will suggest several practical guidelines for instructors in higher education who intend to promote their students’ moral and positive development based on multidisciplinary research in moral psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science (particularly artificial intelligence research). I will focus on the role of instructors as students’ moral models and mentors assisting in exploring and expanding their ethical horizons and implementing learned morals and virtues into action in diverse situations and contexts. Findings from multidisciplinary research will be overviewed to support the necessity of the modeling and mentoring approach in ethics education in higher education. Furthermore, several instructional strategies to boost the effectiveness of the modeling and mentoring-based approach will be introduced along with supporting evidence from empirical studies.