William Damon

William Damon, born in 1944 in Brockton, Mass, is a Professor of Education at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace. Damon has helped develop innovative educational methods such as peer collaboration, project-based learning, and the youth charter. His current work includes a project to promote good work among professionals in a variety of leading fields, and a scientific study that explores the development of purpose in adolescence and early adulthood. Dr. Damon writes on intellectual and moral development through the lifespan. He is the founding editor of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development and editor-in-chief of The Handbook of Child Psychology (1998 and 2006 editions).

Research and Writing Career

William Damon is the author of 16 books and numerous book chapters and articles on education and human development, especially moral development. His work has been influential for research and theory in academic developmental psychology and in the broader society, especially around questions of childrearing and schooling that supports children’s social and moral development. Damon’s editorship of the 5th and 6th editions of the Handbook of Child Psychology places him–along with Carl Murchison, Leonard Carmichael, and Paul Mussen–as one of the great organizers and synthesizers of developmental science. As part of Damon’s commitment to the study of human growth, he also was the founder and long-term editor of the series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

By the time Damon captured the attention of the popular press with his book The Moral Child: Nurturing Children’s Natural Moral Growth (1990), he had written and edited seven scholarly books on the social and moral development of children. His early works include The Social World of the Child (1977), Moral Development (1978), and Social and Personality Development: Infancy through Adolescence (1983). These studies focused on how the moral conduct of children and adolescents plays out in real social situations. Damon emphasized that moral thinking and behavior develop in dynamic relationship with family, peers, teachers, and the larger social world. Moral emotions (such as empathy, shame, and guilt) and the principles of distributive justice (which can be seen in sharing) flourish, or may be smothered, within these relationships.

The Moral Child marked a shift in Damon’s scholarship. The book surveyed and synthesized the large, complex body of research on moral development and translated it for the general public. In addition to bringing him a new audience, the book articulated the implications of the best research for educational practice, childrearing and family relations, communities, and the American culture more broadly.

In 1995, Damon gained an even larger popular audience with his book, Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in Our Homes and Schools (1995), which won the Parent’s Choice Book Award and was the subject of wide media coverage. The book proposed that prevailing child-rearing beliefs and practices are not leading to morally mature or competent young people. Damon argued that, “with best intentions,” parents and schools have been in large part responsible for this situation: our culture's unwavering focus on self-esteem and child-centered practices are misguided and reflect a misunderstanding of “the nature of children and their developmental needs. . . .All the commonly accepted standards for young people’s skills and behavior have fallen drastically. Less is expected of the young, and in turn less is received.” To build character and competence requires high moral standards and expectations. The book received praise from reviewers who agreed with Damon's emphasis on high standards for achievement and service. But the book received criticism from those who believed that children need more attention and more creative freedom to grow rather than, as Damon wrote, the encouragement to take on hard challenges and to develop internal disciple and good habits.

Another important focus in Damon’s work has been his study of moral exemplars. His first book on this subject, Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of Moral Commitment (1992), written with developmental psychologist Anne Colby, opened up a new perspective on moral development and has been widely cited and built upon in the field. Damon and Colby studied individuals who had shown “a sustained commitment to moral ideals or principles” over many decades of their lives. The authors found a number of qualities that were consistent across the entire group of exemplars, including a sense of certainty about their core moral beliefs, a positive attitude toward hardship and challenge, receptivity toward new ideas and goals, a lifelong capacity for moral growth, and a strong integration of their moral values into their sense of self. This book promoted the "moral identity" theory, which maintains that moral commitment and moral action are a function of how important morality is to a person's sense of self. Damon's theory stands in contrast to theories that emphasize the primary importance of moral reasoning skills (Kohlberg), emotions (Haidt), or cultural background (Shweder). For this reason, Damon has been criticized as an individualist,a universalist, and a neo-Aristotelian, positions which have all been out of vogue in the social sciences in recent years. His work has also been citicized for its case study and interview methodology, which some believe to be less rigorous (though more evocative) than experimental studies.

Damon has also worked with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the Good Work Project (GWP). The project studies exemplary leaders and practitioners known in their professions for doing work that is both successful in the usual terms of the field as well as highly ethical. The project seeks to understand the values, motives, and adaptive approaches of these individuals, as well as the challenges and pressures they face. Damon coauthored, with Gardner and Csikszentmihalyi, Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2001) and has written a book on philanthropy based on the project(Taking Philanthropy Seriously).

The Good Work Project aims not only to understand good work but also to promote it in the professions it studies. Damon has partnered for several years with the Committee of Concerned Journalists (CCJ) to produce educational curriculum and training workshops to support high quality journalism that reflects the principles identified in the Good Work study of that profession. The program has been delivered to more than 6,000 newspeople in more than 200 print, online, broadcast journalism organizations.

Damon's current work is aimed at promoting "the character and competence of all young people growing up in today’s world . . . [to provide] guidance for parenting, for improved educational practice, and for youth development in a wide variety of community settings.” One study that is currently underway, for example, looks at young people who exhibit a striking sense of moral purpose. This research has been expanded in the works of Dr. Kendall Cotton-Bronk and Dr.Jenni Menon. In addition, Damon's youth purpose work is closely connected with the "positive youth development" approach pioneered by Peter Benson and Richard Lerner.

In 2008, Damon published The Path to Purpose, the culmination of Damon's twenty-five-year research program on personal identity and moral commitment in human development. The book has been widely cited as the first scientific treatment of how young people find fulfilling purposes in life. The Path to Purpose presents Damon's vision of how schools and parents can help young people find elevated goals to dedicate themselves to, and it contains a critique of prevelant "short-horizens thinking" in today's culture that fosters cynicism and anxiety rather than inspiration and optimism.

Reviews

Damon's most recent book, The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life, received mix reviews. Dawn Friedman of Greater Good magazine, Greater Good Science Center, said, "The book's important message is often lost in dense, academic language, but it still shines through real-world examples."

Books

• Damon, W. (2008) The Path to Purpose: Helping our Children find the Calling in Life. New York: The Free Press.

• Damon, W., and Verducci, S. (2006) Taking Philanthropy Seriously: Beyond Noble Intentions to Responsible Giving. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

• Damon, W. (2004) The Moral Advantage. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

• Damon, W. (2003) Noble Purpose. Radnor, PA: Templeton Foundation Press

• Gardner, H., Csikszentmihalyi, M., and Damon, W. (2001) Good Work: When excellence and ethics meet. New York: Basic Books. (German, Spanish, Chinese, Portuguese, Romanian translations, 2001 – 2005).

• Damon, W. (1997) The Youth Charter: How communities can work together to raise standards for all our children. New York: The Free Press.

• Damon, W. (1995) Greater Expectations: Overcoming the culture of indulgence in our homes and schools. New York: The Free Press. (Italian, Japanese translations, 1997 - 1999)

• Colby, A., and Damon, W. (1992) Some Do Care: Contemporary lives of moral commitment. New York: The Free Press.

• Damon, W. (1990) The Moral Child: Nurturing children's natural moral growth. New York: The Free Press. (Italian, Japanese, German, Chinese, Polish, Korean, Danish translations, 1995 - 2004).

• Damon, W., and Hart, D. (1988) Self-understanding in Childhood and Adolescence. New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Damon, W. (1983). Social and Personality Development: Infancy through adolescence. New York: W. W. Norton. (German translation, 1988; Japanese translation, 1990; Chinese translation, 1992)

• Damon, W. (Ed.) (1983). Social and Personality Development: Essays on the growth of the child. New York: W. W. Norton.

• Damon, W. (1977). The Social World of the Child. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (German translation, 1983; Japanese translation, 1988)

Edited Collections

• Damon, W., and Lerner, R. (Eds.) (2006) Handbook of Child Psychology: The sixth edition (Vols. 1- 4). New York: John Wiley and Sons.

• Damon, W. (Ed) (2002) Bringing in a New Era in Character Education. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

• Damon, W. (Ed.) (1998) Handbook of Child Psychology: The fifth edition (Vols. 1- 4). New York: John Wiley and Sons.

• Damon, W. (Ed.) (1989) Child Development Today and Tomorrow. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Damon, W. (Ed.) (1978). Social Cognition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

• Damon, W. (Ed.) (1978). Moral Development. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

External links

• Hoover Institution - William Damon
• Stanford University School of Education - William Damon
• GoodWork Project
• Stanford Center on Adolescence
• William Damon