Educating for Care and Virtue Development in Young Children: Research Approaches in Ethics Education from the Melarete Project

This book champions care education in early childhood school contexts, addressing the critical need for an effective and meaningful ethics education grounded in Platonic and Aristotelian reflections on virtues, and ultimately positing a theory of ethics education that connects ancient philosophy to contemporary care thinking.

This theory is supported by the empirical findings of the MelArete Project, a 10-year research project in care and virtues education that guides children’s attention to the concepts of care and virtues. Unique amongst contemporary virtue and character approaches, Mortari and her colleagues have developed a rich research base that combines recent educational theories with ancient and continental philosophy.

Ultimately arguing for an ethics education centered on care in the wake of our current ethical crisis, the book contributes to a growing body of literature on prominent virtue and character education programs around the world and will therefore appeal to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students working in moral and values education, ethics education, and educational theory more broadly. Care ethicists and early childhood educators will also benefit from this volume.

Luigina Mortari is Professor of Pedagogy, Theories of Education and Social Education, Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, Italy.