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This chapter positions moral education as concordant with the moral component of religion, but does not equate moral education with socialization into the particular norms or conventions of any specific faith tradition. Research findings have revealed that deeply religious children and adolescents make a similar set of distinctions between religious conventions and moral prescriptions regarding fairness and the welfare of others. This research forms the basis of a critique of the proposition that religiously devout people maintain a separate “morality of divinity.” The chapter reviews research on moral education designed to stimulate development of these universal moral understandings of fairness and welfare through developmental approaches to classroom rules and discipline together with practices that foster responsive engagement and transactive forms of discourse to stimulate the development of a critical moral perspective. This developmental approach to moral education is compatible with the basic moral core of religious systems but may be viewed as challenging to religious traditions and customs that sustain social inequalities.

Winston C. Thompson's review of Moral education for social justice by Larry Nucci and Robyn Ilten-Gee, accurately captures the effort to integrate critical pedagogy with domain-based moral education. A core element is student participation in domain-based discourse entailing responsive engagement that transcends the cognitive activity of individuals. Those discussions may lead to action projects (praxis). Replying to Thompson's review, Nucci and Ilten-Gee address potential problems that may arise from student resistance, and from objections of conservatives who may view attention to social justice as political indoctrination. They conclude that moral education that does not attend to social justice suffers from incoherence.

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The question of ‘developmental appropriateness’ in education can be both empowering and inhibiting. When are students ‘ready’ to talk about social injustices and systemic inequalities? How might educators introduce social inequities using developmental findings about reasoning? This article presents social domain theory as a lens through which educators can approach critical consciousness education with young children. An overview of Freire’s critical consciousness construct is presented, including educational interventions, methods, and approaches that support critical consciousness. An overview of social domain theory is also presented. Social domain theory is a developmental theory of sociomoral reasoning that describes three domains of social knowledge that develop independently, and get applied/coordinated/prioritized differently in context by individuals. This theory, and the research stemming from it, has shown that there are developmental transition points during which children come to view their previous logic as inadequate, and are likely to shift their understandings of moral, conventional, and personal issues. A parallel is drawn between these transition points and the process of wrestling with and overturning ‘contradictions’ in critical consciousness education. Contradictions are theorized as dehumanizing power dynamics that show up in students’ everyday circumstances. This article provides tables outlining example contradictions for young children, key domain–related reasoning shifts for young children, and examples for how to create lesson plans that take these two factors into account. Finally, we propose a method of facilitating self-assessment of critical consciousness with young children. Self-reflection questions are provided for teachers and students.