This paper examines the Aristotelian foundations of the neo-Aristotelian Phronesis Model (APM) (Darnell et al. Human Development. 2019;62(3):101-29; Kristj & aacute;nsson & Fowers. Phronesis: Retrieving Practical Wisdom in Psychology, Philosophy, and Education. 2024) in light of its claim to resolve the moral knowledge-action gap. The paper argues that the APM departs from Aristotle's moral psychology by construing phronesis as having an action component. On Aristotle's account, practical wisdom culminates in prohairesis (reasoned choice or decision), not necessarily in action itself. Rather than rejecting the APM, the paper shows that Aristotle's own conception of phronesis offers other resources, some of which are acknowledged by proponents of the APM but not integrated into the model. Revisiting Aristotle's writings brings into view the interpretive, collective, and political dimensions of practical wisdom. These factors help understand better how wise moral decisions may, or may not, be enacted in concrete social contexts.

This article investigates the roles of imitation and emulation in the development of virtue by questioning the way these learning mechanisms are distinguished in the literature. Conventional views distinguish a deliberate kind of emulation, necessary for the acquisition of practical wisdom and virtue, from the unconscious and automatic imitation of virtuous actions. In this article, this binary is challenged through an analysis of two (autobiographical) novels by the French author Edouard Louis. Eddy, the main character in both novels, adopts behaviours from his friends and teachers on purpose, driven by personal goals rather than the models’ virtuous motives. The novels help us to imagine a new category of moral learning, called ‘deliberate imitation’: it is goal-driven but not fully aligned with the virtuous intentions of the role models. This type of imitation blurs the distinction between imitation and emulation and may serve as a transitional phase. The article ends with a discussion of the implications this type of imitation may have for moral education. It is suggested that teachers may have less control over which of their actions students take to be exemplary and which ones not.

This paper aims to offer a new perspective on role modelling by examining adolescents' own efforts to lead a morally virtuous life. While traditional approaches to moral education emphasize the importance of teachers as role models, this study proposes a shift in focus towards adolescents' own role models. Drawing on the philosophical concept of moral self-cultivation and psychological insights on identity development and social cognitive learning, it is argued that adolescents have the ability to cultivate their moral character by emulating others. However, empirical evidence suggests that adolescents often do not perceive teachers as their role models. Consequently, moral educational theories are advised to demand less of teachers as role models. Teachers could invest more time in understanding students' personal role models and encourage them to compare these role models with their own behavior. By acknowledging and addressing students' role models, teachers can facilitate the moral self-cultivation of adolescents.

The notion of Bildung has been booming in several European countries for almost twenty years now, but it has attracted little attention in vocational education. One reason for this is that Bildung, the process of becoming human as a goal in itself, is understood in opposition to vocational education, which task would be to qualify students for the labour market. The goal of this article is to examine whether a marriage is possible between Bildung and vocational education. This is done by consulting and comparing the ideas of three German thinkers: Von Humboldt's classical view on Bildung in the early 19th century, Spranger's idea of Bildung through vocations in the early 20th century, and Blankertz' critical pedagogy from the 19605. The relevance of these accounts for vocational education today is evaluated by considering whether the authors enable us to think about Bildung and the preparation for a job in a more integrated way. The three accounts have their pros and cons, but Blankertz' critical approach seems most relevant. He accepts that vocational schools prepare for specific jobs, but on the condition that students learn to critically reflect on the kind of society they will be living and working in.

In this empirical study, we investigate what and how teachers in Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) think they contribute to the development of students’ ethical compasses. Six focus groups were conducted with teachers across three programmes: Initial Teaching Education, Business Services, and Information and Communication Technology. This study revealed that teachers across the three different professional disciplines shared similar ideas about what should be addressed in the development of students’ ethical compasses. Their contributions were grouped into three core themes: creating students’ moral awareness, developing students’ moral skills and promoting students’ moral professional behaviour. The majority of the teachers used a wide range of planned and unplanned pedagogic–didactic actions (reflecting individual learning and cooperative and group learning) to enhance the development of students’ ethical compasses. However, teachers’ strategies were mostly unstructured and unreflective and depended on the individual teacher’s ability and knowledge to address moral themes. Furthermore, the study revealed two incompatible ideals: as role models, the teachers aimed to exemplify explicitly how to be a professional with an ethical compass. However, they also wanted to adopt a neutral stance because they were afraid to manipulate the students’ ethical compasses. Therefore, they avoided promoting the ethical compass that they believed to be the best.

The central question of this paper is whether and how, from a virtue ethical perspective, teacher modelling and student emulation hang together in moral education. This matters, because philosophers have often focussed either on the moral psychology of emulation or on modelling as a moral educational method, neglecting the interplay between the two. It starts by analysing the conceptual framework underlying the influential Manner in Teaching (MiT) and Moral Work of Teaching (MWT) projects. It reconstructs how modelling is understood as 'teaching morally' or 'teaching morality'. These two interpretations of modelling are developed further by drawing on additional literature on teacher education and moral education. Then, the conceptual framework is extended by focusing on how students may learn from modelling through mimicry, imitation or emulation. This results in several conceptual relations that illuminate the complex dynamics between teacher modelling and student emulation. For example, teacher modelling does not guarantee student emulation, which challenges the common advocacy for teachers as role models. At the same time, students may emulate teachers without teachers being aware of their impact. This results in a more nuanced understanding of what it takes for teachers to be moral role models.

This paper explores the intersection of teacher modelling and student emulation in moral education. First, two interpretations of teacher modelling are discussed: expressing moral virtues unintentionally and intentionally teaching morality. Next, student emulation is examined, differentiating between mimicry, imitation, and emulation. Third, the paper introduces four scenarios of intentional/unintentional and effective/ineffective modelling, highlighting the complex relationship between teachers’ intentions and students’ responses in the moral education process.

Is a neo-Platonic theory of moral education better than a neo-Aristotelian one, because the former offers a dialogue method that teachers can use in universities to induce epiphanies in students, in order to jump-start the moral development of those with a rather vicious character? In this paper, this claim, put forward by Jonas and Nakazawa in their book A Platonic Theory of Moral Education, is evaluated. Admittedly, the Nicomachean Ethics, which came to us in the form of a collection of edited lecture notes, gives the impression that Aristotle was not interested in dialogue. But by looking at the dialogical form of the Ethics and by consulting some of his ideas on logic, I show that Aristotle's oeuvre does include valuable ideas about how teachers may conduct dialogues with their students. These dialogues may not yield epiphanies and will not convert vicious adults, but they are suitable for reaching most students and can appeal to their emotions and practical wisdom. While Jonas and Nakazawa argue that Plato and Aristotle only agree on the centrality of habituation, imitation, and role-modelling in their accounts of moral education, I conclude that dialogue should be added to that list.

The aim of this empirical study is to understand how bachelor students at universities of applied sciences (UAS) use their ethical compasses during internships. Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year bachelor students across four UAS and three different programs in the Netherlands: Initial Teacher Education, Business Services, and Information and Communication Technology. To our knowledge, no studies appear to have investigated and compared students from multiple professional fields, nor identified the dynamics and the sequence of the strategies in the decision-making process that students use when faced with ethical dilemmas during internships. We found that students' ethical dilemmas stemmed from: mentors' or managers' behaviours/requests, colleagues' behaviours, organisations' morally questionable incentives, pupils' home situations, and pupils' behaviours/personal stories. The majority of students used multiple strategies and first investigated the ethical dilemmas they encountered and then avoided, intervened, delegated responsibilities, or adjusted to their environments. Students' values played an important role in experiencing an ethical dilemma, however, these values were not always acted upon. We identified that rather students' beliefs about having influence and/or ownership (or not), personal interest(s) and power relations influenced the way how they used their ethical compasses. Thus, instead of navigating on moral standards (of their profession), students reacted on beliefs which reflected the ways in which they constructed their internship contexts, social relationships and their own (and others) needs. As a result, half of the mentioned dilemmas were resolved in a prudent-strategic manner (e.g., by prioritising personal interests), instead of morally. This indicates that students did not always convert (moral) values into moral action and did not use their ethical compasses in the way UAS aspires. Finally, this study found that the ways in which students used their ethical compasses were strongly influenced by their environments.

The expression that professionals should be led by their moral or ethical compass is increasingly used by academics, policy makers, professionals, and educational institutes. Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS), for example, explicitly aim to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass. This moral or ethical compass is a metaphor of which people intuitively grasp its meaning, but our literature review also shows that various interpretations are possible. We found three clusters of proposed ethical compasses expressing its a) content, b) form, or c) use, which we present in this article. Thereafter, we evaluate which compass can meaningfully assist (young) professionals and, therefore, should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS. Based on this evaluation, we describe the possibilities and boundaries of UAS' contribution to the development of their students' ethical compass.

In response to market ideology permeating the education system, an appeal has been made to the notion of Bildung to understand better what (higher) education should be about. Traditionally, it denotes a process of becoming human through which individuals can develop their capacities and talents in a harmonious way by relating to cultural sources. Worldwide, empirical research on Bildung is extremely scarce, and the picture of how lecturers at universities of applied science understand their task to contribute to students’ moral education is very fragmented. An online survey was filled out by employees (n = 686) of ten different institutes of a large Dutch university of applied science. Students’ formation turned out to be part of their task perceptions, and was largely understood in terms of stimulating critical thinking and inquiring attitudes. The majority claimed to stimulate Bildung by being a role model and by incorporating it in their daily lessons. Lecturers experienced a packed curriculum, a focus on testing and assessment, and a poor institutional vision on Bildung as obstacles to act on their perceptions. The article ends with a discussion of the (limited) power of the Bildung tradition for universities of applied sciences today.

Full virtue and practical wisdom comprise the end of neo-Aristotelian moral development, but wisdom cannot be cultivated straight away through arguments and teaching. Wisdom is integrated with, and builds upon, habituation: the acquisition of virtuous character traits through the repeated practice of corresponding virtuous actions. Habit formation equips people with a taste for, and commitment to, the good life; furthermore it provides one with discriminatory and reflective capacities to know how to act in particular circumstances. Unfortunately, habituation is often understood primarily as a method suitable only for children. This article examines whether Aristotle limited habituation to children and, if not, what the relationship between habituation and wisdom beyond childhood might look like. This article concludes that wisdom-guided habituation is also possible for adults who continue and confirm their already established virtuous habits. The implications of this for professional moral education are subsequently discussed.

This article aims to explore the moral ideas and experiences that students at Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) have of being a professional with an ‘ethical compass.’Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year Bachelor students divided over four institutions and three different programmes: Initial Teacher Educa- tion, Business Services and Information and Communication Technology. Findings show that students say they strive to be(come) moral professionals, but that they have difficulties recognising and articulating the moral aspects of their professional roles. They seem to lack a moral vocabulary and the moral knowledge to verbalise their aspirations and to provide arguments to explicate or legitimise their moral behaviour. While most students were critical of the support they received from their universities, they indicated that various other role models and (work) experiences did have a strong and positive influence on their moral development. In this article, we reflect on the findings in relation to international empirical research on students’ moral development and highlight the characteristics of UAS students.

This article aims to explore the moral ideas and experiences that students at Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) have of being a professional with an ‘ethical compass.’ Semi-structured interviews were held with 36 fourth-year Bachelor students divided over four institutions and three different programmes: Initial Teacher Education, Business Services and Information and Communication Technology. Findings show that students say they strive to be(come) moral professionals, but that they have difficulties recognising and articulating the moral aspects of their professional roles. They seem to lack a moral vocabulary and the moral knowledge to verbalise their aspirations and to provide arguments to explicate or legitimise their moral behaviour. While most students were critical of the support they received from their universities, they indicated that various other role models and (work) experiences did have a strong and positive influence on their moral development. In this article, we reflect on the findings in relation to international empirical research on students’ moral development and highlight the characteristics of UAS students.

Initial teacher education (ITE) often leaves teachers underprepared for becoming moral teachers. This paper draws upon two UK studies of student teachers, newly qualified teachers and experienced teachers (n = 254) to find out (1) what they think is involved in being a moral teacher (2), how they think that their ITE had prepared them to become a moral teacher, and (3) what recommendations they have for improving ITE. Findings show that acting on moral reasons was often difficult, partly because ITE focused mainly on mastering subject specific content. The importance of acquiring more life and teaching experience was emphasised, and we recommend how teachers can be stimulated to develop as moral teachers.

As neo-Aristotelian character education approaches have become more popular, the list of objections has increased too. This paper focuses on the objection that while character education proponents claim to be 'progressive' and 'reformative' they seem to maintain the educational status quo. This paper examines what happens to neo-Aristotelian character education approaches when they are implemented in schools. First, a range of authors is consulted that has critically followed character education approaches, in particular the one advocated by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. Second, the Bildung tradition is discussed, which was also intended as a progressive and cosmopolitan project, but was used by German governments in the 19(th) century to fashion the nation state. Finally, a comparison between the two approaches is made, raising the question whether it is possible for states to run an education system that does not distort ideals of what it means to be human.

This chapter describes and evaluates that two practitioner research projects that were carried out by teacher educators working at a college for teacher training in the Netherlands. It introduces that practitioner research by way of brief comparison between three perspectives on the nature and justification of such research in education. The chapter follows that Aristotelian approach to practitioner research is described as a kind of moral enquiry mainly directed to the improvement of teachers' practical wisdom. It describes two research projects which both set out to help either pre-service or in-service teachers pay attention to virtues in their subject lessons. The chapter reflects on the question whether it is justified to call these research projects 'Aristotelian' after all. It discusses that 'practitioner' rather than 'professional', as this better fits the notion of 'practitioner research' and also reflects the sympathies with the Alasdair MacIntyrean notion of a 'practice', to which one shall return in due course.

"Compassion and education: cultivating compassionate children, schools and communities." Journal of Beliefs & Values, 39(1), pp. 117–118