Moral Functioning From Adolescence to Adulthood: The Importance of High School Experiences for Adult Family, Work, and Civic Involvement

• In Event: The Future of Research on Moral Education: Desires and Possibilities for How Moral Education Can Contribute to a Culture of Social Justice

Abstract

The purpose is to offer new theoretical considerations regarding the influences of contexts on the continuities and discontinuities of moral functioning from adolescence to adulthood. This paper examines the relationship of adolescents’ experiences in high school, in civic, democratic interventions or in regular high schools, to their adult lives in three domains of adult functioning: family (family patterns, parenting styles) work (team and leadership activities in careers and jobs), and civic engagement (voting in national, state, and local elections, volunteer activities, active engagement in religious and local community organizations to engagement in state, national, and international organizations). As the vision of all prosocial intervention school programs is to create the climate and conditions that optimize or ensure civic and social development progression well into adulthood, it is important to examine the extent to which holds true long term. This paper is in three parts. Part One synthesizes results of prosocial school interventions toward the aim of developing a conceptual understanding of how personal and social effects of intervention programs change throughout adolescence. Part Two presents a 40-year follow-up study of a democratic, moral intervention program examining the relationships of adolescent to adult functioning. Relating the conceptual understanding derived from Part One to the 40-year exemplar study, Part Three presents new theoretical considerations of the importance of contexts for human development and functioning.
Part one presents a review of short-term effects on students of a wide range of prosocial, socio-emotional learning, character, civic, and values programs, creating a conceptual understanding and map regarding which personal and social areas are impacted at what ages. Specifically, it presents short-term results of democratic, moral education programs in two Bronx, New York City high schools during the 1980’s serving low to middle income Latino Americans, African Americans, and European Americans and new and second-generation immigrants from the Caribbean islands, Africa, and Asia.
Part two presents a 40-year long-term follow-up study of adults from the high school samples who remained in the New York City area; they were interviewed in person or with teleconferencing. The aims were: to gather adults’ descriptions of their current lives, to elicit their memories of high school experiences, and to elucidate stories of their lives by constructing relationships between them. Narrative analyses of self-constructed life stories and researcher-noted relationships between high school and adult experiences were done. Analyses from both perspectives related adolescent functioning in the context of high school experiences (intervention or other) to three areas of adult life, family, work, and civic/social involvement. Data include rich qualitative sociomoral reasoning and moral self interviews, and school climate data of the high school years and sociomoral reasoning and moral self interviews and life domains interviews of adulthood. All interviews were transcribed.
Part Three furthers our understanding of moral functioning in adulthood. Qualitative changes and breaks in moral functioning as seen in the 40-year follow-up study data are interpreted within current ideas of moral self, moral identity, and ego identity.

Author

• Ann Higgins-D'Alessandro, Fordham University