Strategic Initiative Development

The Strategic Initiative Development (SID) Committee has been created to support Strategic Initiative proposals that

The Strategic Initiative Development (SID) committee has been created to support proposals that further the mission of the Association for Moral Education (AME) “to foster dialogues, training, resources, and research that links moral theory with practice” and “to support self-reflective educational and other practices that value the worth and dignity of each individual as a moral agent in a pluralistic society.” The AME is committed to fostering a climate of full inclusion, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and internationalism. Each accepted project will receive funding to carry out their work, based on budgetary review.

The 2024 $5,000 Grant is awarded to Francesca Pileggi, the principal investigator, and her team for the project Teachers4Skills (T4S): Training Teachers to Foster Critical-Creative Skills at the University of Turin in Italy.

Submissions for 2025 grants are now open, with a May 16, 2025 deadline. Grant recipients will be announced at the next AME Annual Conference in Finland in August 2025. See below for link to guidelines.

AME is committed to fostering a climate of full inclusion, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and internationalism. Submissions that include a team of AME members who represent diversity in race, ethnicity, home country, religious/spiritual orientation, and/or theoretical perspectives and methodologies are preferred.

**For information, please see the application procedures**

** Please submit your proposal to ame.sid.committee@gmail.com **

Previous Projects

• Experiencing Authentic Dialogue on race and intersections with culture and religion to enhance teaching and learning in schools and colleges.

• Leveraging Colegios Mayores for moral development in higher education through the Just Community approach

• The International Expressions of Kindness: Multimedia Showcase

Project Title: Experiencing Authentic Dialogue on race and intersections with culture and religion to enhance teaching and learning in schools and colleges.

The overall goal of this workshop is to improve the experience of education for teachers and students by addressing issues of race in relation to teaching by bringing together practitioners and academics in an intensive and innovative opportunity to share international expertise and discuss issues of race and contexts of racial meaning and concomitant intersections with religion and culture in educational settings. This opportunity has been developed by cross theory-practice planning groups inclusive of this project team: Dr. Vishalache Balakrishnan, Dr. Phyllis Curtis-Tweed, Dr. Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro, and Dr. Janet Orchard; the international members of the Race and Multicultural SIG of the AME, and two British teachers Saima Saleh, Primary teacher, Surrey, England, and local groups co-ordinator of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, Alexandra Brown, Secondary teacher, Surrey, England, member of National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, and Merryn Evans, Head of Department, Redland Green High School, Bristol, England. To understand continuing influences of colonialism and racism, they and others have developed a film club and this in-person ‘authentic dialogue’ workshop, and as well making plans to work with interested teachers and academics to design future events, online and in-person intensive learning workshops, to promote and investigate ‘authentic dialogue’ as a site of knowledge production and exchange fostering critical reflection by teachers and academics on race/diversity issues. It is hoped that the outcome and sustainability of the workshop will continue to inspire teachers, lecturers, and researchers in their journey towards authentic dialogue as a way of co-existing in a world that is dynamic and ever changing.

PI: Dr. Vishalache Balakrishnan

Vishalache Balakrishnan served as a teacher of English and Moral Education for 14 years in secondary schools before becoming a lecturer in Moral Education at the University of Malaya in 2002. She has improved her academic and professional standards several times: starting with a basic teaching certificate (1990) and a special teaching diploma (1995) at the College of Special Education, Kuala Lumpur; furthered her studies at the University of Malaya for a Bachelor of Education (English as a Second Language) (1999) and a Master of Education (Social Science Education) (2002); went on to study at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand for Doctoral Studies in Moral Education (2009) and to Waikato University, New Zealand (2016), to complete postgraduate studies in critical educational psychology and inclusive education. Apart from being actively involved in moral education curriculum development, and Moral Education teacher training in Malaysia since the 1990s, she is also actively involved in the international arena in the development of global Moral Education; is a committee member of the Asia Pacific Network for Moral Education (http://apnme.org/) and an elected executive board member of The Association for Moral Education (AME) from 2016-2018. In late 1990s, Vishalache was involved with a team of scholars to create awareness of human rights education. Now, Vishalache Balakrishnan is the Director of the Center for International and Comparative Education Research (CRICE) at the University of Malaya. She is also the coordinator of SULAM @ Service Learning Malaysia for the University of Malaya.

Team Member: Dr. Phyllis Curtis-Tweed

Phyllis Curtis-Tweed earned her Ph.D. at Emory University in Educational Leadership with a focus on issues in psychology, specifically agency development, and moral development. She then pursued postdoctoral training in psychology in the Clinical Research Training Program in Social Psychiatry at Harvard University. Dr. Curtis-Tweed was an instructor in psychology at Harvard Medical School for five years and taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Simmons College and at the Harvard affiliated Hospitals. She has been a referee for the Journal of Moral Education, is an Executive Board Member and Treasurer for the Association for Moral Education, and is currently the co-editor of Bermuda College’s Voices in Education journal. She has published and presented at national and international conferences on issues in psychology and education. Dr. Curtis-Tweed has also served as an invited external evaluator for accrediting agencies including the Southern Association of Colleges and School (SACS) She is currently the Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs at Bermuda College.

Team Member: Dr. Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro

Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro, PhD, earned at Pennsylvania State University, was a post-doctoral Fellow and Senior Researcher at the Harvard GSE Center for Moral Development and Education for 12 years, is now Professor of Psychology and Applied Developmental Psychology at Fordham University in New York City. She conducts research, publishes,and teaches on issues of morality and social justice as they play out in the complex interrelationships of individual development and group and cultural changes over time. She has expertise in creating programs and interventions for civic, moral, and social development, in measurement development and evaluation research, and across a range of social cognitive fields. Her current research: 1. Examines multidirectional influences of democratic civic-moral and whole school interventions with teacher, student, and staff socio-moral, emotional, and cultural self/identit(ies); 2. Evaluates whole school character interventions and social cognitive interventions; and 3. In a qualitative study, follows up after 30 years with adults who were Just Community and comparison students in Bronx, NY high schools in the late 1980’s-90’s, reflecting on their sense of civic engagement, moral selfhood, parenting, and worklife. This latter research addresses the well-known but still mainly untested historical and familiar charge, that American schools should not only develop well-educated people, but they should also create citizens with a deep appreciation and understanding of democracy and a strong sense of civic and community responsibility. Acritical issue of our time. She was an early President of the AME, an AME board member and served as chair and member of numerous committees over the years on and off, and currently serves on the Board and as Chair of the newly constituted Strategic Initiatives Development Committee

Team Member: Dr. Janet Orchard

Janet Orchard is Director of Postgraduate Research at the School of Education, University of Bristol. She lectured previously at the Institute of Education, University of London and the Department of Education University of Oxford, having been a teacher and administrator in schools in England. She is a philosopher of education taking a comparative interest in relationships between philosophy, religion, morality and civics in the context of teacher education. She is a JME Trustee as well as belonging to AULRE (the Association of University Lecturers in Religion and Education), the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV), the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. She serves on the editorial board of the British Journal of Religious Education (BJRE) and is co-opted onto the National Association of Religious Education Executive (2015-).

Project Title: Leveraging Colegios Mayores for moral development in higher education through the Just Community approach

Colegios Mayores are the Spanish version of the European Colleges, a relatively unknown and long-standing innovation in higher education to serve the socialization of future ethical leaders of society. Over nearly a millennium, they have existed at universities across Europe. In part, they represent a brilliant and extremely innovative approach to this task by relying on democratic structures long before democracy reemerged in Europe since ancient Greece. To fully realize the promise and legacy of Colegios Mayores, Juan P. Dabdoub (PI) and Aitor R. Salaverría (RA), in collaboration with prominent experts in the moral and character education fields, will elaborate a Guide for practitioners inspired in Kohlberg's Just Community approach to design, implement, and self-assess collaborative governance practices in Colegios Mayores and similar university communities, responding to their actual needs and challenges for moral development.

PI: Dr. Juan Dabdoub.

Juan P. Dabdoub is Assistant Professor at the School of Education and Psychology at University of Navarra in Spain and member of the Education, Citizenship, and Character Research Group. He has been researching and promoting moral and character education in Spain and Latin America since 2015 with the support of the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Besides the University Communities for Character Development initiative, he also leads the international research project Educaracter in Mexico and the Leadership in Character Education courses in Madrid. He has also been leading, researching, and promoting Colegios Mayores for more than a decade

Project member: Aitor Salaverria.

Aitor R. Salaverria has been Educational Director of the Colegio Mayor Belagua (University of Navarra) until 2021, where he has developed his professional activity for the last 10 years. Afterwards, he began his doctoral studies at the School of Education and Psychology at University of Navarra around a thesis project that aims to promote Colegios Mayores for character development, comparing this community approach with that of the prominent models developed by the moral and character education movement. He is a collaborator of the Education, Citizenship and Character Research Group at the University of Navarra.

Expert consultants include Dr. Marvin Berkowitz, Dr. Clark Power, Dr. Concepción Naval, Dr. Miroslava Duranková.

Website: university-communities.org

PROJECT TITLE: The International Expressions of Kindness: Multimedia Showcase

Originally initiated by Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady and supported by Action for Media Education, The International Expressions of Kindness: Multimedia Showcase was launched in January 2022 and gained momentum fast. Since the project provided children, ages 3-18, worldwide, with a safe virtual space where they could express, individually or as a group, their feelings and thoughts on kindness, celebrate the kindness of others, and get inspired to act in a compassionate way, it was doomed to success. In just four months the project team received over 1,000 entries from 1,800 participants in 45 countries and every continent.

After being supported by the AME grant, two project members Amy N. Spangler and Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady thoroughly analyzed all the entries, identified seven key themes, and developed Connect with Kindness Child-Generated Teacher-Friendly curricular materials as a series of lesson plans designed to guide K-12 educators in adapting kindness-informed topics and strategies into classrooms and extracurricular activities in different national contexts. From September to December 2022 the curricula materials were put into practice and tested by about 30 teachers and educators from 10 countries. All received comments required additional analysis and edits, and in February 2023 the curricula materials were finally published and available online. They have been promoted by the pilot participants in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Northern America, and by the curricula authors at several international conferences, in their publications, and in teaching a short spring course on fostering kindness at the University of Turin (Italy). The project is still ongoing.

Most sincere gratitude and appreciation to several AME members – Darcia Narvaez, Levy Farias, and Dawn Schrader, and special thanks to the Strategic Initiatives Development Committee.

Darcia Narvaez is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She is president of KindredWorld.org and the founder and host of EvolvedNest.org. She is the Principal Investigator for the project.

Tatyana Tsyrlina-Spady, PhD, Adjunct Professor at Seattle Pacific University (2009-2020) and Professor Emerita at Kursk State University (Kursk, Russia), an international education consultant, a founder and Editor-in-Chief of the online journal Russian-American Education Forum (2009-2017). She is a project coordinator for international outreach.

Marilyn Cohen, PhD, Professor Emerita at University of WA in Seattle, one of Founders and current executive director of Action for Media Education, and Director of the Northwest Center for Excellence in Media Literacy, College of Education, UW. She is a project co-coordinator for the US-based materials.

Levy Farias, Educator, PhD in Social Sciences, Fulbright Visiting Researcher at the University of Notre Dame (2012-2013), an associated researcher in the Laboratorio de Ciencias Sociales (LACSO), Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV). He is a team leader in phases two and three for Spanish-based materials.