Learning environment and moral development : how university education fosters moral judgment competence in Brazil and two German-speaking countries

The aim of the present research is to investigate the relationship between learning environment opportunities — particularly role-taking and guided reflection — and moral judgment competence development in higher education students in Brazil and German-speaking countries. This is a cross-cultural and cross-sectional study. The sample consists of 1149 participants from three areas of study (psychology, business administration and medical school) in their first and final years of study. There are 618 participants from Brazil and 531 participants from two German-speaking countries. The instruments used are: a) Lind’s Moral Judgment Test (MJT) and b) ORIGIN/u questionnaire. The main results from this research are the following: 1a) Moral development is possible through higher education. 1b) Higher education per se, or years of education alone, are a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition to foster moral judgment competence. 1c) Moral judgment competence levels increase in groups where students are highly involved in integrated, not isolated, role-taking and guided reflection activities (a favorable learning environment). 1d) In opposition, an unfavorable learning environment leads to regression or stagnation of moral judgment competence. 2a) The hierarchical preference of moral stages (affective aspect of moral behavior) does not depend on culture or education. 2b) The cognitive aspect (moral judgment competence) reflects cultural as well as cognitive structural differences irrespective of culture. 3a) Moral judgment competence does not correlate with age and does not correlate with years of study when the variable learning environment is not controlled. 3b) It cannot be expected that high-competitive institutions per se stimulate moral judgment competence. 3c) Medical students present a regression and psychology students an increase of moral competence levels over their years of studies. 4) Moral judgment competence regression is possible: moral development does not follow an invariant upward and forward process as defended by Kohlberg (1984). 5) No gender differences are found when the variable education is controlled. This author suggests that educators consider two levels of intervention for the development of moral judgment competence — first, at a teacher professional development level and second, at the students’ level. The role-taking and guided reflection framework offers useful constructs for students’ and teacher education. However, it needs to be adapted and differentiated to respect the context of each area of study as well as individual and cultural differences