The DIT and the CENTER

The Center began in the early 1970s as faculty and students from various disciplines began to meet informally to discuss research on moral development. In 1982 the Center was formally established with James Rest as Research Director and Muriel Bebeau as Education Director. It was housed in the Department of Educational Psychology, College of Education & Human Development at the University of Minnesota . James Rest passed away in July, 1999. The center continued with Darcia Narvaez as Executive Director, Steve Thoma as Research Director, and Muriel Bebeau as Education Director until August 2000, when Darcia Narvaez moved to Notre Dame. At that point, Muriel (Mickey) Bebeau became the Executive Director. Darcia Narvaez maintains a relationship as a faculty affiliate.

The major activity of the Center has been research with the Defining Issues Test, a measure of moral judgment development; however attention has also been given to other research tools, especially as a wider conception of moral development, one that includes moral judgment development, has emerged. The wider conception of moral development was proposed by James Rest in the early 80s, and is referred to as “The Four Component Model of Morality.”

The Center remains a loose confederation of scholars. Empirical research remains the focus of the Center (in contrast to other Centers which sponsor public forums and speak to issues of the day). To gain an impression of the scope of current research of the Center, peruse descriptions of recent papers and publications (see section on Publications and Papers) and information on a new index, which seems to have better validity than the former “p” index (see New Index). Essentially the routine is to use printed forms purchased from the Center, have subjects fill out these forms, mail the forms back to the Center, then we send back a Report and diskette with the scored data.