New Perspectives on Moral Development

In this state-of-the-art volume, chapters by top scholars address moral development in connection with related matters of empathy, sympathy, agency, responsibility, normativity, guilt, collaboration, autonomy, identity, peer interaction, family relations, and social convention. Underlying the volume is a constructivist developmental consensus that morality is the outcome of developmental processes in which children and adolescents, individually and collectively, play active roles in their own moral progress. Only by considering children’s constructive contributions to their own development can we understand the real nature of morality.

David Moshman, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Nebraska- Lincoln, USA

Charles Helwig has produced a new and exciting volume on perspectives on morality. The approaches to morality, featured in this book, represent answers to the timeless and substantive questions regarding the origins of morality, the role of emotions and reasoning, how parents influence moral development, and the significant and myriad ways in which culture has its influence.This is a "must-read" for students and scholars who want to learn about the new and engaging scholarship on the origins of morality. I applaud Professor Helwig for bringing together scholars from multiple perspectives to shed light on what are fundamental and central aspects for the survival of human civilization, which includes the need to respect one another, treat each other with compassion, fairness, equality, and justice.

Melanie Killen, University of Maryland, and Editor of the Handbook of Moral Development, 2nd edition, and author of Children and Social Exclusion: Morality, Prejudice, and Group Identity.

New Perspectives on Moral Development edited by Charles Helwig lives up to its name by including chapters from authors across a range of perspectives addressing the core issues of contemporary moral development research and theory. The book addresses the early emergence of morality, the role of emotion and reasoning, moral agency, parent-child relations, and the impact of culture. Some authors, such as Smetana and Tomasello are well-established scholars. Part of what makes this book exiting is the inclusion of new scholars such as Tina Malti and Audun Dahl, who are destined to be the field’s future leaders. Despite being an edited book this volume has a coherence and structure that invites reading cover to cover.

Larry Nucci, Graduate School of Education, University of California, USA