Few areas of education are as central to the purposes of public schooling as the formation of children's social values. For members of the multicultural democracies, none is more controversial. At the core of current controversies is how we are going to define what we mean by morality. Among the questions we need to answer are the following: Is morality a set of rules we acquire like any other, or does morality constitute a set of understandings that are in some way distinct from other areas of social knowledge? Does morality involve or even rely on cognition, or is it simply an emotion like empathy or guilt that guides our conduct? Are there universal or transcultural aspects to morality, or is morality culture specific? If there are universals in morality, does this mean there are moral absolutes? Does morality rest on religious norms, or are moral and religious concepts distinct from one another? Do moral understandings change over the course of history, or is morality ahistorical and transcendent? Can morality be taught, or does it have to be “caught”? Is there such a thing as moral character? If not, how do we account for and foster the development of people who act in accordance with a set of moral principles? Finally, how best can teachers make use of our knowledge about children's moral and social growth in their everyday classroom practices?

This two-part book addresses those questions by bringing together the basic findings from what has been referred to as the “domain theory” of social development, and the related work that has been done on classroom practice.