The reader will probably be able to suggest alternative placements for a few of
the chapters. We readily acknowledge this and merely claim to have made the
most appropriate assignments possible.

When one first visits Kohlberg' Center for Moral Education and Development
at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, one is invariably struck with the
eclectic nature of the moral education enterprise. One finds the scholars there
struggling to synthesize Piaget and Durkheim, Dewey and Habermas, the Israeli
kibbutz and urban American high schools. Furthermore, the traditional Friday
afternoon roundtables are equally likely to be presented by a psychologist, an
educator, a philospher, a theologian, a sociologist, an administrator or a psycho-
therapist. And astonishingly all are welcome and all are relevant. We have
attempted to represent this fifth aspect of Kohlberg's work by including chapters
by philosophers (e.g., Otfried Höffe and Guido Küng), psychologists (e.g.,
Steven Brion-Meisels & Robert Selman, and Augusto Blasi), educators (e.g.,
Clark Power, and Fritz Oser & Andre Schläfli), psychotherapists (e.g., Gil
Noam and Alexandra Hewer) and others.

Yet a sixth aspect of Kohlberg's work has been its international orientation.
Both the theoretical origins of Kohlberg's thinking ( Piaget, Dewey, Durkheim,
Socrates, Rawls, Kant, Mead) and the geographic locations of his research
( United States, Israel, Mexico, Turkey, Taiwan, etc.) represent an international
focus. This volume is also clearly and intentionally international as well. The
contributors are from the United States, Switzerland, Germany and Israel, four
of the countries where most of the current work in Kohlbergian moral education
is being done. Included in the representation of European authors are two per-
spectives that may be new to many American readers, that of discourse ethics
(cf. Habermas, 1984) and action theory (cf. Eckensberger & Reinshagen, 1980).
These perspectives have become quite popular in European circles and are only
now being introduced to American audiences. It is our hope that this volume will
expedite the process of introduction.

Kohlberg has historically focused much of his research and application on the
adolescent, even though his theoretical work spans early childhood to old age
(cf. Kohlberg, 1973; Kohlberg & Gilligan, 1971; Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969).
We have emphasized the adolescent in this collection as a seventh aspect of the
spirit of Kohlberg's work. While there are chapters that are not specific to any
particular developmental group (e.g., Nisan, chapter 17; Blasi, chapter 19; Rest,
chapter 1) and others that refer to both younger (e.g., Keller & Reuss, chapter 4)
and older individuals (e.g., Candee, chapter 12; Higgins & Gordon, chapter 10),
the modal emphasis is clearly on adolescence.

We would also like to point out that his volume, while heavily focused on
Kohlberg's work from both supportive and critical perspectives, is not limited to
Kohlbergian emphases. Both Nisan (chapter 17) and Blasi (chapter 19) introduce
ideas that need no connection to traditional cognitive-developmental education to
be meaningful and valid. Furthermore, Villenave-Cremer and Eckensberger

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