Principled Moral Reasoning and Behavior of Preservice Teacher Education Students

Abstract

Although teachers have considerable influence on young people’s moral development, results of several studies suggest that preservice education students demonstrate lower principled moral reasoning than college students with other majors. The purpose of this study was to measure the levels of principled moral reasoning of preservice teacher education students and to compare their performance with that of college students with other majors. The study also investigated the relationship between the performance of participants on the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and their self-reported propensity to engage in academic misconduct as measured by the Academic Misconduct Survey (AMS). Results corroborate earlier findings indicating that teacher education students (n = 145) demonstrate significantly lower principled moral reasoning scores than two composite samples of college students with other majors. Results also indicate a weak but significant inverse relationship between P-scores (the Principled Score) and AMS scores, indicating that participants’ levels of moral reasoning may affect ethical behavior.