An exploration of moral orientation, gender and the nature of the dilemma in moral reasoning of community college presidents

Abstract

Moral development as a cognitive process was first presented by Piaget, and then by Kohlberg, who brought together the philosophical and psychological views of morality into a theory of justice reasoning. Some twenty years later, Gilligan, by including women's thinking in theory building, identified two distinct moral orientations: care and justice.

This research was intended to contribute to the evolution of theories of moral development. First, the phenomena of moral development was examined through a literature review, then semi-structured interviews were used to investigate moral reasoning of community college presidents. Data were analyzed using procedures suggested by Glaser and Strauss. whether two or more than two orientations to moral problem solving was used by research subjects was investigated by examination of real-life dilemmas of community college presidents. An analysis of findings considered gender of the respondent and the nature of the moral dilemma.

The major findings indicate that when faced with a real-life moral dilemma, community college presidents know and use three overlapping orientations--Justice, Care, and Self--which form a pattern for moral decision making. The orientation patterns used in the moral reasoning process were found to vary somewhat by gender, but not by the nature of the dilemma, leading to the conclusion that future studies of moral reasoning and moral development should include a recognition of gender differences and multiple orientations in moral decision making.