Although teachers have considerable influence on young people’s moral development, results of several studies suggest that preservice education students demonstrate lower principled moral reasoning than college students with other majors. The purpose of this study was to measure the levels of principled moral reasoning of preservice teacher education students and to compare their performance with that of college students with other majors. The study also investigated the relationship between the performance of participants on the Defining Issues Test (DIT) and their self-reported propensity to engage in academic misconduct as measured by the Academic Misconduct Survey (AMS). Results corroborate earlier findings indicating that teacher education students (n = 145) demonstrate significantly lower principled moral reasoning scores than two composite samples of college students with other majors. Results also indicate a weak but significant inverse relationship between P-scores (the Principled Score) and AMS scores, indicating that participants’ levels of moral reasoning may affect ethical behavior.

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Many transition plans for students with learning disabilities suffer because (a) they often focus on the employment needs of students with more severe cognitive and physical disabilities and (b) they are not required until as late as 14 years old, sometimes too late for many students with learning disabilities. Lack of effective transition planning may result in inadequate postsecondary adjustment problems (e.g., under‐ or unemployment, restricted participation in community and leisure activities). The authors describe specific problems in transition planning for students with learning disabilities and offer suggestions for designing K‐12 transition plans that are uniquely suited for these students.

Gifted children in grades 7-9 (N = 98) judged the importance of selected teacher characteristics in personal-social, cognitive, and classroom management domains. Subjects were enrolled in a gifted program in a large junior high school in West Texas. Gifted children were found to prefer personal-social characteristics over cognitive or classroom management characteristics. Results were compared to findings of a similar study conducted in Israel in which cognitive characteristics were found to be most highly valued.