Abstract:

Unlike the rapid development of STEAM education, moral education has obviously received much less attention. However, while not arguably more important than science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics, moral judgment is integral to teacher groups. In order to study this issue, we considered Laurence Kohlberg's moral judgement interview and James Rest et al. defining issues test 2 (DIT2) from the theoretical basis and tools, and finally chose the latter. In addition to DIT2's original question, we also asked for some basic information and variable that might influence moral judgment. The participants are all pre-service teachers of universities in Taiwan. During two semesters (September 2020- July 2021), we collected 22 valid data through online questionnaires. Compared to the criteria provided by the Center for the Study of Ethical Development (The University of Alabama), Taiwan’s pre-service teachers had higher average N2 scores (key indicators in DIT2), but not significantly. There was no significant effect for sex, religious beliefs, and experience of taking ethics courses. However, the parental education level significantly predicted N2 scores, β = .491, t = 2.521, p = .02. The parental education level explained a significant proportion of variance in N2 scores, R2 = .241, F(1,20) = 6.355, p = .20. The results show that within the group of pre-service teachers, the performance of moral judgment is similar. The only variable that had an impact in the study was parental education level. This seems to reveal the extent to which family influence still has a place. When educators want to improve the moral judgment of preservice teachers, it may be beneficial to start with understanding their families. Finally, some limitations and future research directions are proposed. In particular, whether there is a correlation between STEAM competencies and moral judgment.

Keywords:

Pre-service teachers, moral judgment, defining issues test 2 (DIT2).