Contributions of moral education lectures and moral discussion in Hong Kong secondary schools

Moral education in the traditional form of classroom didactic lectures in secondary schools has been prevailing in Hong Kong since the initiation of moral education in the 1980s. However, such a traditional form has not received credit from research in the West. Instead, discussion of moral issues would be a more effective way of moral education than would didactic lectures. Because of the differential ways of moral education in Hong Kong, findings from other places can be subject to a test in Hong Kong. As such, this study employed panel data from 19,069 secondary school students in Hong Kong to analyze the impacts of moral education on moral commitment to sustain societal interests. Findings indicated a weak contribution of moral discussion and an even weaker contribution of moral education lectures to moral commitment. These findings therefore echo those in other places and suggest that real-life moral education contributes in the expected way, albeit weakly. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.