Moral, Education and Religion in Iran: The Significance of Higher Education for the Development of Moral Judgment and Discourse Competence in a Country Shaped by Religion

The present research was designed to find out if in a country like Iran, in which religion has had a strong formative influence higher education can foster the development of moral judgment and discourse competence. In accordance with Kohlberg and Habermas, Lind defines this competence as the ability to act according to one s own moral orientations and to engage in a moral discourse about conflicting issues, rather than use force or violence. According to the Education Theory of moral development, this competence is fostered in university education by opportunities for respon¬sibility-taking and guided reflection, and is hampered by dogmatic religiosity (but not hampered by personal religiosity). Studies in various countries have empirically supported this relationship quite well.How far do the same mechanisms hold true for Iranian higher education? To what extend do these opportunities exist there and do foster moral competence, and does dogmatic religiosity hamper its development? In Iran apply special terms. Since the coming into power of the Mullah in 1979, Iran is a reli¬gious country. Dogmatic religiosity, that is, the strict orientation to the doctrines of one s religious community, is widespread. Does this dogmatic religiosity interfere with cognitive-moral functioning of students? Does it lead to moral segmentation, i.e., the partial inhibition of moral competence on issues which are dogmatized ?The empirical study, conducted in 2004, included a total of 579 students in their first and in their fourth year of study in three fields: medical science, engi¬neering science and psychology. The assessment instruments used were Lind s Moral Judgment Test (MJT) for assessing simultaneously moral orientations and moral competence, parts of the ORIRIN/u by Lind and Schillinger for assessing opportunities for responsibility-taking and guided reflection, and a modified version of the Religious Dogmatism Scale by Kietzig and Lind.The central findings of this study: As one would expect, dogmatic religiosity was very high among the Iranian students. Dogmatic religiosity does hamper the development of moral judgment and discourse com¬petence and even causes regression. Individual as well as contextual dogmatic religiosity increases moral segmentation, that is, it does not affect the students moral competence in total but only their ability to solve moral problems for which a religious dogma exists. Dogmatic-religious people do not only agree with their religious community on the solution of issues of religious salience (e.g., mercy-killing), but also refrain from even thin¬king about those issues. College education by itself, that is, the pure length of study, does not seem to foster the develop¬ment of moral and dis-course competence of the students. However, as this and many others studies have shown, moral regression and moral segmentation can be overcome, and moral competence be fostered, by providing students with opportunities of responsibility-taking and guided reflection, and even more effectively by special kinds of dilemma-discussions. As the Iranian students reported, such favorable learning opportunities were rather scarce in their university