Moral Reasoning Assessment for Singapore Secondary Schools: A Review

Endeavours to assess moral reasoning in education have largely been via established but less contemporary measures, with recent measures developed more than a decade ago. Together with the call to go beyond assessing cognitive constructs, and the intended learning outcomes of the Singapore Ministry of Education Character and Citizenship Education curriculum that requires teachers to help students progress in their moral reasoning stages, there is a need for a measure that affords consistency when evaluating students' attainment of learning outcomes stipulated in the curriculum. Guided by Messick's unitary concept of validity, this paper reviewed existing measures of moral reasoning for suitability, and found that established measures presented varying degrees of tenability in assessing moral reasoning. Findings related to content appropriateness and group administrability yielded a paucity of measures applicable for large-scale assessment of moral reasoning in Singapore secondary schools. To address some of these issues, this review suggests the development of a fit-for-purpose measure.