Laying the foundations of phronesis (practical wisdom) through moral dilemma discussions in Chinese primary schools

ABSTRACT

The present study explores how a moral dilemma discussion method in Chinese classroom settings can help develop some of the foundations of practical wisdom (phronesis). The study context focuses on Morality-and-Law classes in Chinese primary schools, which signal the beginning of the moral education curriculum. The study employs a qualitative approach, by interviewing 12 Morality-and-Law teachers from 10 Chinese Primary Schools to glean insights into the use of moral dilemma discussions in their classrooms—a tried-and-tested method of practical-wisdom cultivation. The findings suggest that while moral dilemma discussions are not alien to those Chinese teachers, they harbour both positive and negative perceptions towards such discussions. Most teachers recognise their value, and they have been used as one of the methods (among others) in those classes. The teachers do not pay much attention to the assessment element but simply use moral dilemmas as material to stimulate classroom discussions and foster students’ critical thinking/judgement, which can be seen as laying some of the foundations of practical wisdom from a neo-Aristotelian perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Phronesis (practical wisdom)
• moral dilemmas
• Chinese primary schools
• Morality-and-Law classes
• classroom practice

Introduction

The concept of phronesis, commonly expressed as ‘practical wisdom’ in English, refers to a meta-virtue that harmonises the different ethical virtues and detects the right actions to be performed in individual situations, e.g., when one is faced with moral dilemmas (Jubilee Centre, 2022). The current education literature is witnessing an increasing body of research that explores the concept of phronesis and its role in education: most specifically, neo-Aristotelian character education (Kristjánsson, 2015), which traces its roots back to the ancient philosopher Aristotle. This recent literature is seeking out helpful ways to reconstruct certain missing elements in Aristotle’s text, e.g., on how to teach phronesis (Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024, chap. 11).

Although the concept of practical wisdom can be understood as having a Western ancestry (mainly associated with Aristotle), this does not mean that practical wisdom is exclusively valuable and relevant in Western-style character education. Consideration should also be given to other societies (non-Western), as character education itself is not exclusive to Western societies and, indeed, is currently being addressed and emphasised in diverse cultures, such as China (Huo et al., 2022). Chinese moral and character education distinguishes itself in many ways from its counterparts in the West (e.g., the UK and USA). However, the official aim of cultivating good Chinese citizens who are equipped with ‘core socialist values’ (CCCPC, 2023) does not contradict the educational purpose of cultivating good humans who are Chinese and global citizens at the same time. For example, Huo et al. (2022) identified three common themes aligning current discourses on Western character education and Chinese moral education.

In the view of the present authors, all moral education focuses on the educational goal of cultivating good human persons, as well as global citizens, who are prepared to meet and take responsibility for world challenges, such as climate change, peaceful co-existence and economic growth. For example, standard moral dilemmas originally proposed in the Western literature (e.g., the classic trolley-problem ones) have the same relevance for a Chinese student in Tsinghua University as a student at Harvard, theoretically and practically. Moreover, the dilemma choice facing young students, between being loyal to your friend or honestly respecting rules (by reporting to the teacher that your friend is cheating in an exam), transcends cultures, borders and nationalities. Neo-Aristotelian virtue-based solutions to moral dilemmas stand out from the existing Western literature. According to a recent ‘keyword-burst analysis,’ Chen et al. (2023) identified a significant revival of Aristotle’s philosophy of moral education and phronesis, characterised as the new cutting edge of moral education research; thus, the present study prioritises a neo-Aristotelian perspective over others, to reinforce a virtue-based approach to moral education.

Chinese Primary Schools have a discrete curriculum focused on fostering students’ moral and character development. This is embodied in the subject ‘Morality and Law’, which used to be called ‘Character and Life’ for lower-level students and ‘Character and Society’ for higher-level students. Since 2016, the Chinese Ministry of Education has rolled out the new curriculum nationwide to enhance and improve the learning content and effectiveness of moral education. The newly developed Morality-and-Law classes thus constitute the main venue for the implementation of moral education in the current Primary School environment. Teaching materials for Morality-and-Law classes are standardised nationwide. This standardisation offers a framework for organising the teaching semester, although teachers can still use their own initiative to decide on how to teach those materials, using different methods or ‘prompts’ with which they are familiar.

It is worth noting that the newly developed version of Morality-and-Law teaching materials contain some moral dilemma scenarios (Yin, 2021). Some researchers and teachers have already pointed out the value of using moral dilemmas in those classes to foster students’ critical thinking (e.g., Hong & Liao, 2023; Li, 2022) and moral judgement (Huang, 2021). Yin (2022) highlights that dilemma discussions can elicit students’ cognitive differences and are more likely to stimulate students’ active thinking and active construction of their own moral schemas. In other words, this method arguably promotes the development of students’ moral cognition, their capacity to make automatic judgements, and taps into their cognitive differences, which lead to improving and adjusting their moral cognitive structures to achieve a new dynamic balance.

Yet how moral dilemma discussions have been used or practised in Morality-and-Law classes in Chinese Primary classrooms is still largely unknown, owing to a lack of empirical research into the subject area. Nor has there been any serious theoretical discussion of how this method relates to the more general cultivation of practical wisdom, foregrounded in standard character-education literatures. Kristjánsson and Fowers (2024, chap. 11) remind us that making progress in the educational study of phronesis is not only a conceptual or philosophical endeavour but also an empirical one. Cultivating moral learners’ practical wisdom, which will help them resolve various moral dilemmas in any given life situation, is a vital task for Chinese character education, although it has not been pursued intentionally or systematically so far.

This study explores: 1. What is the current state of play in using moral dilemmas to cultivate the foundations of students’ practical wisdom in Chinese Primary School Morality-and-Law classrooms? 2. What is teachers’ rationale for using moral dilemmas in those classrooms? 3. What are the challenges that teachers face when applying moral dilemmas in their classrooms? The current paper reports on a qualitative study based on interviews with 12 Chinese Primary School teachers to address these questions.

Literature review

As noted above, the salience of phronesis (practical wisdom) has been commonly acknowledged among character-education researchers, especially those grounding their work in Aristotelian virtue ethics (e.g., Carr, 2012; Curren, 2000; Kristjánsson, 2015; Sanderse, 2012). However, the cultivation of practical wisdom, namely how to teach phronesis in the classroom, remains something of a mystery. Aristotle himself said phronesis is concerned with particulars and universals, and particulars become known from experience. Thus, the cultivation of phronesis depends on experience, requiring some length of time to produce it (Aristotle, 1985, p. 160). Aristotle does not tell us when students have garnered sufficient experience to develop phronesis, nor how it can be stimulated in classrooms. He says much more about early-years habituation and role-modelling, which seem to a large extent uncritical. But this creates a ‘paradox of moral education’ for educators (Peters, 1981): how can students learn to think critically and autonomously if they are just trained heteronomously through uncritical study methods?

Researchers have attempted to explore this ‘paradox’ and have offered some answers. For instance, Kristjánsson devotes a whole chapter to discussing phronesis development in his widely-cited 2015 monograph (pp. 85–103). This chapter provides various tips on how to develop practical wisdom, identifies some of the most noticeable problems and absorbs lessons from current interdisciplinary empirical research while, at the same, trying to be loyal to the old master’s spirit. It is worth highlighting the problem here of ‘the dearth of attention given to phronesis in character education circles’ (Kristjánsson, 2015, p. 86). Similarly, Schwarz and Sharpe (2010, p. 11) complain that practical wisdom is rarely mentioned in academic debates and public discourse.

Fortunately, there is now increasing research interest in phronesis and a growing number of researchers are talking about practical wisdom with enthusiasm. Four strands of work on practical wisdom can be observed. The first strand derives from classic Aristotelian scholarship (e.g., Russell, 2014), which is typically represented by an exegetical approach, looking for answers in Aristotle’s texts on how practical wisdom can be taught; but to borrow Kristjánsson’s playful words, that is like ‘looking for wool in a goat’s house’ (2015, p. 86). The second strand is grounded in psychological research, including both positive psychology (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) and developmental psychology (Staudinger & Glück, 2011), where ‘wisdom’ has been identified as a key virtue. However, these sources do not couch wisdom in terms of phronesis, thus lacking any serious engagement with neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics. The third strand arises from the current popularity of phronesis within professional ethics, represented by research within the ‘people profession’, such as medicine, nursing, social work, army service and teaching. Unfortunately, this strand of work often tends to understand practical wisdom as ‘mysterious intuitive artistry’ (Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024) and misses its essential moral and rational aspects. The fourth strand, and also in the present view the most promising one, can be described as the reconstructive neo-Aristotelian scholarship (e.g., Annas, 2011; Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024; Sherman, 1989). These scholars are not interested only in what Aristotle actually said about how to teach phronesis (which was under-developed) but focus on ‘what Aristotle could have said’ or what can be reasonably added to Aristotle’s account in the spirit of reconstructive work.

The most notable reconstructive work, based on Aristotle himself as well as absorbing new insights from moral psychology, is the Jubilee Centre’s phronetic moral decision-making model (Darnell et al., 2019). This model proposes four components of phronesis: namely, moral identity, moral sensitivity, moral emotion and moral adjudication. Moral identity is understood as the degree to which being a moral person is important to one’s sense of self. Moral sensitivity refers to the ability to identify and attend to moral issues. Moral emotion is considered as an affective factor, involving states such as empathy and compassion but also that of regulatively aligning emotion with reason. Moral adjudication refers, finally, to the ability to reason about and justify the morally ideal course of action, serving an integrative function in the model.

Most of the current literature on phronesis development, grounded in Aristotle’s works, including that of the Jubilee Centre (2022), focuses on adolescents and young adults (Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024). However, not all reconstructive Aristotelian scholars share such a view. When Annas (2011) put forward her ‘skills analogy’ of virtue, it opened up the possibility of cultivating phronesis from an earlier age, as if educating a child to play an instrument (e.g., violin); where the earlier they start, the better. Similarly, Sherman (1989) suggests that the cultivation of full phronetic virtue needs to be visible throughout the entire educational process: allowing for the development of ‘critical thinking’ even within the early habituation process. For Sherman, this process involves the employment of critical capacities, where the child recognises mistakes and learns from them, learns to understand instructions and critically follows tips and cues. So for Sherman, phronesis development must begin at the Primary School level or even earlier. As Annas reminds us, virtue is an ‘essentially developmental notion’ (2011, p. 38), which is often neglected by contemporary virtue ethics.

The standard neo-Kohlbergian literature on the use of moral dilemmas as a teaching strategy and method of evaluation presupposes that dilemmas activate moral reasoning (Rest et al., 2000), corresponding broadly to ‘moral adjudication’ in the Jubilee Centre model of phronesis, that is, the ability to weigh or adjudicate the relative priority of virtues in complex value-conflicting situations (Darnell et al., 2019). Three close similarities between moral dilemma deliberations of the Kohlbergian kind and phronesis-component moral adjudication can be articulated: 1) attention to moral dilemmas and moral adjudication both require ‘intellect’ effort—rational analysis; 2) moral dilemmas and moral adjudication both deal with value conflicts, be those principle-orientated or virtue-based; 3) Kohlbergian moral dilemma deliberation and moral adjudication are both crucial components in enabling moral agents to ‘decide’ which of the possible actions is most apt. For those reasons, we decided to focus in our interviews on the potential of moral dilemma discussions to facilitate the development of one phronesis component—in the sense of laying the foundations¹ for moral adjudication—at the Primary School level. We do not exclude the possibility that moral dilemma discussions also help cultivate students’ budding moral emotion, moral sensitivity and their sense of moral identity, but we leave those three additional components out of consideration here, for reasons of scope and space.

Moral dilemmas (or quandaries) refer to situations in which the moral agent must consider two or more moral values or virtues but can only honour one of them; thus, the agent will violate at least one important moral virtue/concern, regardless of the final decision (Kvalnes, 2019). As already indicated, the importance of moral dilemmas in moral development has been established for more than half of a century (e.g., Kohlberg, 1971). In response to criticisms of Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental stage theory (e.g., Kristjánsson, 2015), neo-Kohlbergians have mitigated the excessive rationalism of Kohlberg’s own theory and replaced it with a ‘softer’ stage theory that is in better alignment with theories of characterological virtue development (Rest et al., 2000). For example, the Defining Issues Test (Rest, 1979) uses moral dilemmas that originated from Kohlberg’s work; and the Intermediate Concept Measure (ICM) identifies adolescents’ real-life stories to develop moral dilemmas related to virtues (Thoma, 2014). These neo-Kohlbergian measures have established reliable findings when measuring moral judgement development, and they have kept the interest in moral dilemmas alive despite the fall from grace of Kohlberg’s rationalistic theory and its replacement with character education as the more typical theory of choice. Thus, we can say that moral dilemma discussion is possibly one of the few activities that Kohlbergians, neo-Kohlbergians, Aristotelians and neo-Aristotelians would agree with as an ideal strategy for moral development in schools, albeit for different reasons. To cut a long story short, the former two have their theoretical origins in a deontological approach to ethics, whereas the latter two presuppose a virtue-based approach (Darnell et al., 2019).

Research methods

Given the exploratory nature of the present study, a qualitative approach was adopted. Interviews with first-line Morality-and-Law teachers offer an opportunity to learn ‘what’s going on’ in the moral education classes, providing a setting for investigating the use of moral dilemma discussions in the classroom, which constitutes something of a ‘black box’ at the moment, given the lack of empirical evidence. An interview protocol containing 12 questions was developed, and most of the questions were open-ended ones, allowing teachers to share their views, experiences and perspectives. In the process of interviewing the 12 teacher participants, dynamic dialogues were created that offered rich resources and materials for data analysis—leading to the presented findings. The sub-sections below offer more details about the participants, the protocol, the research procedure and the data analysis.

Participants

Twelve teachers from 10 Chinese public Primary Schools were selected. The criterion for selecting participants was that they teach the Morality-and-Law class. This is because Morality-and-Law is currently the only explicit moral education curriculum in Chinese Primary Schools. These teachers were reached via a convenience snowball sampling method. Despite the snowballing, the teachers came from schools located in four distinct cities, including the Tier-One City Beijing, New Tier-One Cities Nanjing and Chengdu, and a Tier-Two City Baoding. The schools can be viewed as representing three types of public schools: nationally distinguished Primary Schools in a city centre, a standard public Primary School in a city area and public Primary Schools in rural countryside areas. From the perspective of moral education, these schools can also be classified into two types: moral education pilot schools and ordinary schools.² There was also a good mix of new teachers with just 2 years of working experience and experienced teachers with over 20 years of working experience; the average teaching experience was 7.3 years. Table 1 offers further information about the participants.

Table 1. Participant demographics.

Teacher No.	Years of teaching	Other position	Current teaching level	School location	Moral education pilot district or school
T1	2	Young Pioneers Counsellor	Grade 5	Beijing central area	Moral education pilot school
T2	20plus	Subject leader	Grade 5 & 6	Sichuan city area
T3	5	Admin officer	Grade 4 & 5	Nanjing city area
T4	3	English teacher	Grade 5 & 6	Nanjing rural area
T5	3		Grade 4, 5 & 6	Nanjing rural-urban area
T6	12	Subject leader	Grades 5, 6	Nanjing city area	Moral education pilot school
T7*	4	Deputy head teacher	Grades 3, 4	Beijing city area
T8*	3	Deputy head teacher, Chinese teacher	Grade 1, 2	Beijing city area
T9	13	Chinese teacher	Grade 1	Hebei city area
T10	8	Head teacher	Grade 1	Hebei city area
T11	7	Psychology counsellor, Labour teacher, Music teacher, School WeChat Communicator	Grade 1, 2	Beijing rural area
T12	8	Subject leader, Deputy head teacher	Grade 1, 3, 5, 6	Beijing rural area

Teacher 7 and Teacher 8 answered via an interview questionnaire; the rest were online interviews.

Protocol

An interview protocol was developed by the researchers. The protocol consists of three parts: 1. About you: This section collects basic information about the teachers, such as their years of teaching, which level of students they are teaching, and their roles in their schools. 2. The second part explores the current situation in the Morality-and-Law class. It asks teachers about the perceived effectiveness of the course in fostering students’ moral competence and virtues, what are the most effective ways to cultivate students’ moral competence and virtues and what are the challenges or barriers encountered. 3. The third section focuses on exploring the use of moral dilemmas in the classroom. Moral dilemma definitions and examples were provided to the teachers first, then the teachers were asked if they applied moral dilemma discussions in their classrooms, what were examples of the moral dilemmas they used and how those were used, what were the perceived effects, and how long the discussion lasted, what were the procedures and how many students were involved. Finally, teachers were asked if they think training in how to facilitate moral dilemma discussions is necessary for their work. Before the protocol was applied, it was piloted with three Morality-and-Law teachers and given to three moral education experts.³ Subsequently, it was revised based on their comments. Although the study’s interview questions do not appear to be directly aligned with the concept of phronesis, as noted above in the literature review, moral dilemma situations closely relate to at least one of the phronesis components—moral adjudication.

Procedure

A research brief and a consent form were sent to the potential participants via WeChat. With each participant’s consent, the researcher and the participant agreed on a time, and an online one-to-one interview was conducted via TenCent meeting. Most interviews were about 30 minutes, with some over 40 minutes. The interviews were recorded with note-taking. The recorded interviews were then transcribed and analysed. Two out of 12 interviewees, owing to personal reasons, preferred to participate in the research by writing down their answers; in such cases, the interview protocol was sent to them and was sent back to the researcher after they filled in their answers. When there was something that needed to be clarified, the researcher contacted the teacher via WeChat and sought clarification.

The research was approved by the first researcher’s university Ethics Committee and followed the university ethical research guidelines. All teachers were given coded names so that no real identities were revealed.

Data analysis

The data analysis was conducted manually. The analysis process was divided into two stages. The first stage can be viewed as a within-interview analysis. During this stage, each interview was treated as a comprehensive ‘case’ in and of itself. Any notable (strong) statement or example was given special attention. The second stage looked for themes that emerged following the thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) across the interviews. The aim was to seek out central common/shared and/or contradicting messages, examining disparate passages and looking for similarities and differences (constructing themes) among different interview cases. The analysis results were derived from teachers’ actual responses and answers, which were collated into constructed themes and cohesive segments. Thus, the findings do not quote all responses from the teachers. They only quote the overlapping messages, which demonstrate the needed information to the greatest extent in a consensual sense.

Limitation of the current research

Qualitative studies, like the present one, based on convenience sampling and a small number of participants, allow for limited interpretations and generalisations are often not valid. We are fully aware of this limitation, and our study does not aim to represent the whole population of Chinese Primary School teachers but simply offers an analysis in the specific context. Future studies should consider including secondary-school or university-level instructors for comparisons and contrasts. In addition, a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative research methods should also be considered. For example, it would be exciting to administer an instrument measuring practical wisdom (see, e.g., Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024) to students and see whether a method of moral dilemma discussion facilitates, in a statistically significant way, the adjudication component of practical wisdom development or perhaps other components.

Findings

Two different attitudes towards moral dilemma discussions in the classroom

Two main general attitudes were identified: One was positive: There are teachers (n = 8) who are very positive towards applying moral dilemma discussion in their Morality-and-Law classes:

I often use moral dilemma discussion in my classroom … Reality is complicated; it is not always white and black … moral dilemma discussion is a very good way to foster students’ critical thinking … (Teacher 6)

I enjoy using moral dilemma discussions with students all the time, such as Kohlberg’s famous Heinz story. Students love to discuss and share their opinions; there are moral values in it, if Heinz should steal the medicine to save his wife? Some students would say no because it’s against the law, and some would say yes, because otherwise his wife will die; students have many answers and many reasons, and it helps them to develop an open mindset and compassion. Not being so rigid in all situations … (Teacher 2)

For those teachers who hold a positive attitude towards using moral dilemmas in the classroom, some of the reasons evoking their enthusiasm can be seen below:

I know those dilemmas because I am a trained psychologist and I have received formal training. (Teacher 2)

We are super okay to use real-life moral dilemmas, as Professor Lu Jie’s thoughts on life moral education theory have offered us a lot of inspiration and guidance. Because Professor Lu came to our district and selected our district as a moral education pilot area. (Teacher 6)

We have teaching-research groups which offer training, guidance and tips for teaching, both school levels and district levels, for school levels, it happens almost all the time, formal group meetings and even the conversations in between classes; for district level, it is about once a week, we will have a teacher representative to attend and then share within the school. (Teacher 1)

Negative: In contrast to teachers who are positive and enthusiastic about using moral dilemma discussion in their classroom, there are some teachers (n = 4) who are not very keen on such a method:

There are many ways that can be used in the classroom, such as direct teaching, situational method, experiential method and so on. I think moral dilemma discussion is just a small part of the classroom methods. (Teacher 12)

Even if I want to use some moral dilemma in my classroom, it is very time-consuming to find suitable materials that are suitable to the students’ levels. (Teacher 12)

I tend not to let students have too many discussions during the class, because it’s a waste of precious class time. (Teacher 10)

Some possible reasons for the negative attitudes towards moral dilemmas are associated with teachers’ professional backgrounds, current teaching duties and school ethos.

I teach grade 1 and grade 2 Morality-and-Law, and I am the deputy head teacher of grade 1, in addition, I am a psychological counsellor at the school, I also help manage the school’s WeChat public account, and I also teach music and labour. (Teacher 11)

For Morality-and-Law, I teach grade 1, 3, 5 and 6; I also teach labour and compressive class. I also act as the deputy head teacher and subject leader. (Teacher 12)

I once asked students to have a discussion, similar to a dilemma situation, and left the class with an open end. Then, the school principal suggested that the teacher should offer students a correct answer—the answer. It happened that day when the school principal was sitting and listening to my class. (Teacher 11)

A simplified moral dilemma discussion method

Although there are some enthusiastic teachers who would like to devote considerable time to moral dilemma cases in their classroom, this method was not typically operated systematically or through a formal procedure. Most notably, none of the teachers mentioned the issue of how to measure progress in this area. Even the term ‘moral dilemma’ was typically often used in a ‘casual’ way: as a stimulating impetus for classroom discussion (common); or as a good strategy to foster students’ critical thinking and moral reasoning (less common).

Based on the data, the participants usually provide 3–20 minutes (e.g., Teacher 1 allows max. 20 minutes, Teacher 5 just offers 3–5 minutes, most of the teachers offer somewhere between 5–10 minutes) for the entire moral dilemma session; seldom, the teacher would devote the whole class (45 minutes) to a moral dilemma lesson (unless in preparation for a debate event for fostering students’ debating skills, but often without a moral focus: Teacher 6). Moral dilemma discussion thus appears to be used mostly as one of the ‘casual’ teaching strategies. Moreover, the reality is that there is a rich teaching content that needs to be covered so that teachers usually cannot solely focus on one moral dilemma during the whole lesson:

Moral dilemmas are one of the sessions in the entire class, I would just offer 3 to 5 minutes for the discussion. Usually there will be other materials to be covered. (Teacher 5)

It is not possible to use the whole class to do a moral dilemma, because there are lots of other content that need to be taught. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time. (Teacher, 10)

The new curriculum standard does not highlight moral dilemma as a theme, but has elements of it in its teaching materials. (Teacher 8)

Real-life moral dilemmas are more valued than fictional ones

The original moral dilemmas known from the Kohlbergian and neo-Kohlbergian contexts are fictional stories involving hypothetical, often far-fetched, scenarios, which allow the discussant to freely express views without any personal concerns. In contrast to this deployment, the interviewees found moral dilemmas derived from real life more attractive and meaningful to students, helping them better prepare for real-life challenges. Almost all the teachers agreed on the unique charm of real-life dilemmas, although some teachers recognise the value of hypothetical moral dilemma discussions (e.g., Teacher 2 mentioned Heinz’s story, and Teacher 5 mentioned the trolley problem):

I offered my personal life moral dilemma for students to discuss, and students show a tremendous amount of interest as they think they are sorting out something for their teacher, which they would not have demonstrated by working with an idealised person’s or a fictional dilemma story. (Teacher 4)

Now that many families have a second child, the first-born child may have some conflicts with their parents caused by the second-born child, for example, they want to arrange their own time for some activities, but the parents want them to baby-sit the second-born child. By using such real-life case/dilemma, when we offer students the opportunity to discuss and share or ask them to change perspectives and recall when they were little, it helps students understand their parents’ challenges and better deal with their relationship with their parents and their new-born brother or sister. (Teacher 6)

Interviewing the teachers actually confirmed that the Morality-and-Law textbooks already contain several moral dilemmas that are derived from real life. There were various real-life moral dilemma cases provided by the teachers, listed in the below table. One of the dilemmas, about jumping the queue, was mentioned by four teachers. The purpose of Table 2 is to exemplify what kind of moral dilemma discussions have been employed within Chinese Primary School classrooms, not to give an exhaustive list.

Table 2. Moral dilemma examples used in Morality-and-Law class in Chinese Primary schools.

No.	Moral dilemma context	Conflicting virtues or concerns
1	My good friend violated our class rule. Should I report it to the teacher?	Obeying the rule vs. being loyal to a friend
2	Should I agree to vote for my friend?	Justice and fairness vs. friendship
3	Should I allow my friend, who sits next to me, to look at my answers during the exam?	Punishment rule vs. loyalty to a friend
4	I am queuing; should I let my friend jump the line to buy tickets?	Respect the norm and others vs. friendship
5	My friend told me her secret and the secret is about something bad she did, should I keep the secret?	Honesty vs. friendship
6	Should I stop other people’s bad behaviours in public?	Undertaking social responsibilities vs. self-protection
7	Should I join the school orchestra practice today, or should I miss it to attend the final day’s exhibition?	Collective benefits vs. personal gains/development
8	If I am desperate to use the loo, should I jump the line?	Respect the norm and others vs. physical need
9	When going to the market, should I continue to use plastic bags?	Environmental concern vs. convenience
10	I have agreed with my friend that we are going to play in the park, but my parents asked me to babysit at home, what should I do?	Keeping promises vs. respect for parents, filial piety
11	The family financial situation is very difficult; should children work to help?	Obeying the law vs. undertaking family responsibility
12	How do we balance the relationship between community environmental hygiene and treating stray cats?	Maintaining public health vs. treating animals well

Key challenge: The cognition and action gap: ‘Students don’t walk the talk’

Teachers commonly face challenges or concerns that ‘students don’t walk the talk’. 10 out of 12 teachers commented that their students are very strong at communicating ideas and expressing their opinions about dilemmas, but when it comes to real actions, they are not acting accordingly:

They can often offer 100% satisfactory answers in classroom discussions; however, when it comes to real-life situations, that is a different story. (Teacher 4).

The students in my class are among the brightest students who can always say things appropriately; however, a very simple thing, for example, something has been dropped on the floor, the students are reluctant to pick it up, and they ask: why me? (Teacher 1)

After I marked students’ assignments, I asked a nearby student to distribute those assignments to each student, typically the student would ask ‘why me? And on one occasion, I put the pile of assignments on the top of the desk in front of the classroom and it was still there the second day … (Teacher 5)

Discussion

Enthusiastic teachers

There were some common characteristics uniting the enthusiastic teachers: First, they all recognise the value of moral dilemma discussions. They see it not just as a way or method to stimulate students’ learning interests in the classroom but also recognise its moral value to train students’ moral reasoning or what the Jubilee Centre would call ‘moral adjudication’ (Darnell et al., 2019). This belief can be related to their years of training; for example, teachers with a psychology degree would find moral dilemma discussions rather familiar and appealing, as it was part of their education or training content. For example, Teacher 2 actively mentioned Kohlberg’s Heinz story as soon as the researcher said that the third section of the interview is about moral dilemmas, without the need to provide her with an example. Some teachers, without such training, asked the researcher to explain to them what a moral dilemma is. So, here, the previous training and education experience made a difference. ‘Phronesis’ is not a word in the ordinary Chinese teacher’s lexicon, which is why no teachers mentioned dilemmas being conducive to the development of (practical) wisdom. In that sense, the teachers are more Kohlbergian than Aristotelian in their approach, although they are more alert than Kohlberg was to the ‘gappiness problem’, i.e., the gap between reasoning well and acting well. Yet they remain ‘Aristotelian’ in not making any substantive distinction between moral and civic capacities (Peterson, 2020).

Second, teachers enthusiastic towards moral dilemma discussions all share a high standard of professional excellence; they are either subject leaders with many years of working experience or relatively young teachers working at a moral education pilot school or located in a moral education pilot district. Those receive continuous training on how to teach moral education more effectively throughout the year. For instance, both Teacher 6 and Teacher 2 are subject leaders in their school and district. As they said, they have more opportunities to be exposed to research outcomes and be in contact with moral education academics. Third, they are members of a research-teaching group, either organised by their local Ministry of Education or at the school level; in this group, they share the ethos of being open-minded and trying out different methods, including moral dilemma discussions. The lesson seems to be that this method does not come naturally to teachers; it must be carefully prepared-for and coached. In addition, from this discourse of the enthusiastic teachers it becomes apparent that the kind of foundations of phronesis that we have been talking about are not directly referring to the moral adjudication component as such, but to some more basic critical elements for ethical decision-making. For example, this is evidenced from the statement by Teacher 6 that ‘moral dilemma discussion is a very good way to foster students’ critical thinking’.

‘Not-a-big-fan’ teachers

Some of the teachers do not appreciate the value of moral dilemma discussions; they consider it just an ordinary method among many other methods, and indeed one that is very time-consuming and difficult to find suitable teaching materials for. This understanding is also due to their background and training experiences. Quite often, teachers who hold such opinions are not ‘professional’ Morality-and-Law teachers. They used to be teachers of other subjects but were later shoehorned into becoming Morality-and-Law teachers; and they did not have the relevant or sufficient training in moral education, philosophy or moral psychology. Even when they become Morality-and-Law teachers, they still undertake many other responsibilities. Teacher 11, apart from teaching Morality and Law to two grades, also acts as a Chinese teacher, music teacher, psychology counsellor, and labour teacher, and even manages the school WeChat public account, which is usually managed by an admin officer. In fact, Teacher 11 is not alone: 8 out the 12 teacher participants teach more than one grade and undertake other roles and responsibilities. Some of them need to teach four grades at the same time (e.g., Teacher 12), and that is something rather ordinary in the eyes of those teachers, simply because they need to hit the required teaching/working loads to be fully paid. Perhaps, after learning these facts, we should not be so surprised by Teacher 12’s comment about how time-consuming it is to prepare the relevant teaching materials.

Some of the teachers, including the school leaders, created the impression of being somewhat narrow-minded about what and how they teach. They believe that there should be a fixed answer, one and only correct answer, or truth, which a moral dilemma discussion does not provide. This was reflected in Teacher 11’s expression; even though she tried to offer students the opportunity to experience an open-ended discussion, which she thinks is valuable to the students, the school leader favoured the opposite, offering the students a simple ‘correct’ answer so that no risks of misleading to the students would be incurred. Such an attitude from the leader seems to be demotivating for individual teachers. In the present case, this might be because Teacher 11’s school is in a rural area, and the overall quality of their teachers cannot be compared with those in city areas and national key schools. This points to a more general problem of resource inequality still being commonly present in the Chinese education system.

Cropped moral dilemmas

The original moral dilemma discussion measures (e.g., DIT, ICM), assume that responses to moral dilemmas reveal a key dimension of students’ moral schema/stage or development. It is better to have the same levels of students together to discuss and share ideas (Noriyuki, 1997). However, moral dilemma discussions appeared more like a casual moral education ‘facilitator’ rather than a moral development ‘instrument’ in the present study. Despite some familiarity with the Kohlbergian tradition, the measurement element of moral dilemma methodology was largely missing in these Chinese Primary School classrooms.

The elision of such an element helps us reflect on the effectiveness and accuracy of moral development measurements. To be sure, it may be neither necessary nor desirable for the teachers to know exactly at what level of moral development students are. Determining students’ moral levels (be it in a Kohlbergian reasoning-sense or Aristotelian phronesis-sense) requires specifically psychometrically trained researchers or teachers, as well as systematic efforts to devote a specific amount of time and space to focus on ascertaining students’ moral developmental levels based on their choices and reasoning (Rest et al., 2000). Such requirements may not be easily met by the majority of schools in China, when more than half of the teachers are not professional Morality-and-Law teachers and must undertake multiple roles at the same time (as revealed above). Although a trick seems to be missed not to attach any kind of evaluation to the use of moral dilemmas, it is of course possible to use this method as a pedagogical strategy only, without worrying about measurements of progress.

In fact, this is the way moral dilemmas are typically used by the interviewees, namely as what we could call a ‘cropped pedagogical moral dilemma discussion’ method, which departs from its original testing and measuring purpose typically seen in Kohlbergian and neo-Kohlbergian theories. As Chinese researchers have reported (Huo & Xie, 2020), students’ moral development does not always appear as an upward trajectory; it is possible that they experience some bumps on the way, and it may also be possible, for example, that one component of their practical wisdom, such as moral emotion, develops at a different pace from another one, such as moral adjudication. Rigorous evaluations (e.g., using the ICM or the Jubilee Centre’s phronesis measure) are needed for further enlightenment in this area.

The gap between words and deeds

This gap is not unique to Chinese Primary School students. There are other studies among adults reporting, for instance, that although the majority of Chinese consumers say that they would like to consume more ethically, few do so (Huo, 2016). This, then, can be linked to the famous Chinese educational ethos of ‘uniting knowledge and action’ and to what in the West is known as ‘the gappiness problem’ (Darnell et al., 2019). This observation also brings us back to the starting point of this paper, that phronesis is an intellectual meta-virtue. Aristotle considered mainly two types of virtues: virtues of action (moral or civic) and virtues of mind/thought, with practical wisdom belonging to the latter. In order to make phronesis as a virtue of thought inform the virtues of action, uncritical habituation is not enough, as Sherman (1989) argued. Moral dilemma discussions at the Primary School level can be understood as the first port of call in transferring knowledge from the mind to the heart by helping students learn to use the resources of the intellect wisely.

Precisely because of the gap identified by the teachers, in which students can ‘communicate as giants but act like dwarfs’, we believe that moral dilemma discussions should be used more systematically to help cultivate some of the components of practical wisdom, especially moral adjudication, whilst the other components, such as moral sensitivity and moral identity, may require a slightly more advanced age to develop. We have seen that some Chinese Primary School teachers are aware of the adjudication potential of dilemma discussions, but only seem to be dimly aware of the potential for cultivating other moral components.

Conclusion

Practical wisdom, as complex and sophisticated as it is, is commonly considered a meta-virtue for adults and professionals only (Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024). The present study has explored moral dilemma discussions in a Chinese Primary School context. Drawing on one of the proposed components of practical wisdom, our findings suggest that the cultivation of practical wisdom is not exclusive to adult or professional ethics. It, just like virtues of the moral and civic kind, can and should be cultivated or at least prepared for from an early stage of life to lay the foundations for the development of more advanced capacities of excellent decision-making. As Sherman (1989) suggests, the critical nature of full virtue must be reflected in the entire educational process. Specifically, it is possible to prepare some of the foundations of practical wisdom in Primary School classrooms, based on real-life moral dilemma discussions, as the above findings illustrated. If students have never been provided with an opportunity to develop their sense of practical wisdom in resolving conflict-virtue situations in their early educational experiences, it would be unrealistic to expect them suddenly to handle those challenging quandaries well once they enter secondary or tertiary education, let alone in their professional training or adult life.

Practically, the Chinese school teachers interviewed adopted a ‘soft’ or ‘cropped’ version of moral dilemma discussions, compared with the original Kohlbergian ones. They do not pay attention to measurements, nor provide any holistic reasoning strategies for students, but instead they offer ‘critical space’ for the students to reflect on the best possible rationales and solutions. Moral dilemmas retrieved from real-life contexts are more favourably viewed by the majority of teachers, although hypothetical dilemmas were also used by some teachers in certain cases. Policy makers such as the Chinese Ministry of Education and its new curriculum standards designing team should consider paying more systematic attention to moral dilemmas; specific training in and the promotion of moral dilemmas in classroom practice should be put explicitly on the agenda of Primary Schools. Its theoretical underpinnings, in either neo-Kohlbergian or neo-Aristotelian theories, should also be carefully considered and explained to aspiring and experienced professionals.

Theoretically, the purpose of teaching/laying the foundations of practical wisdom via moral dilemma discussions in classrooms can be justified from either neo-Kohlbergian or neo-Aristotelian perspectives (or both). However, there are some questions yet to be considered: 1) To what extent can the different components of practical wisdom really be developed through moral dilemma discussions? As already suggested, it would be interesting to administer an instrument measuring practical wisdom (see, e.g., Kristjánsson & Fowers, 2024) to students to see whether a method of moral dilemma discussion facilitates practical wisdom development, and then which components specifically and in which order. 2) What are the best procedures for moral dilemma discussions in classroom teaching? 3) What kind of training should be provided to teachers to better facilitate moral dilemma discussions? 4) How can the reason-infusion of moral emotions best be fostered alongside moral adjudication? 5) How can moral identity and moral sensitivity also can be cultivated in Primary Schools—or is that something that must await the secondary-school level? Future research should consider and address all these issues—both nationally and internationally.

All in all, the interviews with the Chinese teachers have strengthened the belief of the present authors that moral dilemma discussions provide a useful way to prepare some of the foundations of practical wisdom in a Primary School setting. Since practical wisdom is a meta-virtue, which harmonises the moral and civic virtues when there is an axiological clash, moral dilemma discussions provide a context in which students can be exposed to virtue-conflict situations, especially to moral dilemmas derived from contexts that closely relate to their lives, so as to cultivate their capacities for making wise choices.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank three professors and three Morality-and-Law teachers for viewing the protocol and providing valuable feedback. We would also like to thank all the front-line teachers who sacrificed their time to accept the interviews and share their experiences and perspectives. Without their help, this paper would not have materialised.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Yan Huo

Yan Huo is an Assistant Professor at the Academy of Future Education at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University and Guest Research Fellow at Tsinghua University Center for Youth Moral Education. She was a postdoc at Tsinghua University for three years, where her research focus was on youth moral development and character education in the school context.

Prior to that, Huo obtained her PhD in the UK and followed by one year of working experience as a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham, where her research focus was on Aristotelian character education (moral virtues) and how to measure character strengths. Dr Huo’s research orientation can be summarized as the application and practical exploration of moral philosophies (virtue ethics) combined with educational and psychological theories, with special emphasis on the concept of character and virtues in moral education.

Hongyan Cheng

Hongyan Cheng is a Full Professor at the School of Education at the Central China Normal University. She is also the Deputy Director of the Institute for Moral Education, which is a key research base for humanities and social sciences in Hubei Province; the Institute was approved by the Hubei Provincial Department of Education in 2014.

Dr Hongyan’s research area is moral education, philosophy of education and educational reform in China. In particular, she is interested in elementary school education and its balanced development; the characteristic of her research can be summed as bridging the gap between theory and practice; in terms of her research methodology, she pays close attention to the application of empirical research and classical reading.

Jin Xie

Jin Xie is the Director at the Center for Youth Moral Education at Tsinghua University. She is also the Associate Professor in Research and the Deputy Dean of School of Public Policy and Management at the same University.

Prior to that, Jin Xie served as the Senior Coordinator in the President Office for the period of five years and Coordinator and Instructor in the Students Affairs Office for the period of six years in Tsinghua University. Dr Jin Xie’s main research interests are University Governance; Students’ Experience; Career Guidance; Human Resources Management; Moral Education.

Notes

1. ‘Foundations’ can be understood as some relevant decision-making skills, such as critical thinking, that act as developmental precursors of the adjudicative component of phronesis.

2. ‘Ordinary schools’ refers to standard public schools. ‘Moral education pilot schools’ refers to schools receiving certain honours or titles for emphasising moral education.

3. All the experts are Chinese full professors so that they are able to read the protocol (in Chinese). One is an expert on moral psychology, one is an expert on moral education, the third one is an expert in education philosophy and values education.