Moral Education in Modern Schooling Systems

The Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) invites scholars and researchers to submit proposals for a research seminar on moral education and the teaching of ethics in modern schooling systems, with particular attention to Muslim societies.

Contemporary ethical scholarship has devoted considerable attention to questions such as What is the good? and What makes an action moral? Yet an equally important question concerns how young people are educated for the good.

Moral formation has long occupied a central place in philosophical and Islamic intellectual traditions, from discussions of virtue and character to concepts such as adab, tarbiya, and taʾdīb. Modern schooling, however, has significantly changed the context in which moral formation takes place. Compulsory education, centralized curricula, the role of the nation-state, religious and civic education, globalization, and increasingly diverse societies all raise important questions about what values schools should teach, how they should teach them, and toward what ends.

The seminar seeks to advance scholarly discussion on moral education in modern schooling systems, with particular attention to Muslim societies, consistent with CILE's mission. It aims to examine the religious, philosophical, ethical, pedagogical, psychological, and curricular dimensions of teaching ethics, while exploring how Islamic intellectual and educational traditions can contribute to contemporary debates on character formation, moral reasoning, citizenship, and human flourishing. By bringing together scholars and practitioners, the seminar aims to develop an interdisciplinary theoretical and practical understanding of moral education and its role in addressing the challenges facing contemporary societies.