Integrating a structured ethical reflection curriculum into high school community service experiences: impact on students' sociomoral development.

It is widely accepted within the field of community service that reflection is an important factor in promoting personal and sociomoral development. The purpose of this research was to determine if a particular form of reflection--decision making with an emphasis on the ethical nature of community service--has special value in achieving service-learning goals. Three dimensions of adolescent identity development served as dependent variables: agency, social relatedness, and moral-political awareness. Four hundred seventy-six high school students were assessed on the dependent variables before and after experiencing one of three conditions: community service with an ethical reasoning component; community service with reflection, but without an ethical reasoning component; and no community service (control). After one semester, it was found that students in the first condition (ethical decision making curriculum integrated into the community service program) made greater advances on all three dimensions of identity formation when compared with students in the other two conditions. Specifically, it was found that they became more systematic in their ethical reasoning and more likely to consider situations and issues from an ethical point of view.