The impact of education level and type on moral reasoning

Abstract

AbstractThe importance of education in developing morally sensitive individuals who use principled moral reasoning when facing dilemmas has been widely acknowledged. In the context of the criticism levelled at the Irish higher education system for failing to fulfil the role of intellectual leader and moral critic within the public domain, this paper examines the impact of education level (both undergraduate and post-graduate) and type (arts or technical/profession-based) on moral reasoning using 311 Irish participants from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. An enhanced understanding of the impact of education on moral reasoning will facilitate the development of educational initiatives aimed at augmenting moral reasoning in higher-level students.Keywords: moral reasoningmoral behavioureducation leveleducation typeuniversity education AcknowledgementsThis research was carried out with the financial assistance of a grant from the National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) in Ireland for which we are most grateful.Notes on contributorsDr Elaine Doyle has a primary degree in law and accounting from UL, a 'master's degree in accounting from UCD and a Ph.D. from the University of Sheffield in the UK. She qualified as a tax consultant in 1999 and as a chartered accountant in 2000, thereafter spending six years working as a practicing tax accountant before joining the UL faculty in 2002. Her Ph.D. research involved examining ethics in tax practice, the development of a research instrument to examine the ethical reasoning of tax practitioners in a work-related context and the empirical testing of the instrument. She has published in this area in world-class academic journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics. She has also published in the areas of tax compliance and research ethics. She chairs the Kemmy Business School Research Ethics Committee and is a member of the governing counsel of the Irish Accounting and Finance Association (IAFA).Dr Joanne O'Flaherty – (BSc) Physical Education – is a lecturer at the Department of Education and Professional Studies, University of Limerick. Joanne qualified as a Physical Education and English teacher and worked in a variety of educational settings, including the formal post-primary sector and the NGO sector, before joing the UL faculty. Her Ph.D. research involved studying the levels of moral reasoning in an undergraduate population of an Irish university over the duration of their undergraduate programme. She is responsible for both coordinating and disseminating different education modules offered by the Department of Education and Professional Studies at both undergraduate and post-graduate level.Notes1. The short form of the original DIT was utilised in this study in order to facilitate comparison with scores from past studies using the same instrument and also to minimise the time taken to complete the test. Furthermore, P scores rather than N2 scores were also used to facilitate comparison with prior studies.