Larry Walker

Profile

Lawrence J. Walker (“Larry” to his friends and colleagues) began his life in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick and, for most of his adulthood, has lived in the western province of British Columbia. He earned his BA (honors psychology, minor philosophy) and MA (experimental psychology) from the University of New Brunswick, and his PhD (developmental psychology) from the University of Toronto.

In 1979, he joined the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver and rose through the ranks from assistant, associate, to full professor, and then professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2019. His most significant University service included Graduate Director in the Department of Psychology (18 years) and Senior Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (6 years). He continues to serve the University in retirement as the Academic Integrity Advisor, handling academic misconduct cases involving graduate students.

Over the years Larry has held several professional service responsibilities including: Coordinator of the Developmental Psychology Section of the Canadian Psychological Association, Chair of the Board of Carey Theological College, Associate Editor of the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, member of the editorial boards of several journals including the Journal of Moral Education (25 years), member of the Executive Board of the Association for Moral Education (8 years), and AME President (1995-98).

He has been the recipient of several awards including fellow of both the Canadian Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association, the UBC Psychology Master Teaching Award, the UBC Killam Research Prize, and the AME Kuhmerker Career Award. He has received consistent research funding over his career from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

His primary scholarly interest has been in moral development and moral personality, beginning with his undergraduate honors thesis and continuing for half a century. He has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters and delivered over 240 conference and invited presentations. Although most of his publications have been in psychology journals, he has authored 12 articles (including 2 book reviews) in the Journal of Moral Education.

His collaborators and co-authors have primarily been his graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who have enriched his work and life greatly, notably including Michael Boyes, Brian de Vries, John Taylor, Russ Pitts, Tobias Krettenauer, Karl Hennig, Kyle Matsuba, Michael Maclean, Kevin Reimer, Chris Newitt, Jeremy Frimer, Will Dunlop, and Thomas Wiens. Three of his doctoral students won the AME Dissertation Award (John Taylor, Karl Hennig, & Kyle Matsuba). Kyle Matsuba also garnered the AME Good Work Award.

The primary themes in Larry’s research over the decades have involved examining the validity of a stage model of moral development and related processes in developmental progression;the role of gender in moral reasoning; parental and peer influences on moral development;conceptions of morality and the moral domain; moral personality, moral identity, and character; and the psychological functioning of moral exemplars. It was his goal to help engender a more full-bodied understanding of moral functioning.

In semi-retirement, Larry finds fulfillment in handling academic misconduct cases and trying to facilitate some personal development out of students’ moral failures. He continues his enthusiasm for ocean kayaking (albeit at a slower pace), traveling and exploring the world, and his passionate joy is his family, including his seven grandchildren.

Conversation Themes

• Background and early years: deep English roots: father as a boy WW2 evacuee from London to Canada; mother’s family from England to New England in 1600s and settled in Nova Scotia in mid-1700s; in New Brunswick, Larry, as second child of eight, some ‘responsibility for making family function’; ‘devout Christian family’ formed life and influenced interest in moral development; service as chair of board of a theological college on campus and on senate of another for many years; scholarly interest in relationship of faith and morality.
  
  
• Education: BA in Psychology (minor Philosophy); MA Experimental Psychology, University of New Brunswick (oldest public university in N. America); drawn initially to clinical psychology but did not find 1970s behaviourism and social learning theory meaningful; used moral judgement as the objective of intervention in his BA honours thesis; moved from Piaget to Kohlberg; strong training in statistics and methodology; University of Toronto, doctorate in 2 years demonstrating Kohlbergian stages of moral development required cognitive and perspective-taking pre-requisites; Kohlberg was an absent examiner; supported by Dwight Boyd on committee.
  
  
• University life: University of Winnipeg one year; University of British Columbia (UBC), Psychology Dept., 40 years and 7 years ‘semi-retirement’; on tenure track position and rose through ranks; supportive colleagues and department; ‘taught what wanted and did research on what interested me’; ‘sweetest job’ and fulfilment; opportunities in USA but ‘loyal Canadian’; from an ‘outsider perspective’ examined Kohlberg’s strong claims on the nature of moral development and interventions, testing empirical claims about hierarchical and sequential stages, cognitive disequilibrium and universality.
  
  
• Emphases in scholarly research and publications: 100 plus papers in a range of peer-reviewed journals and books, 10 in JME, and 240 conference presentations; empirical reports and theoretical critiques of many dimensions of morality and development, including:
  · Cognitive moral development: one of six papers selected, ‘Kohlberg’s cognitive-developmental contributions to moral psychology’ (1996), showed limitations of hypothetical dilemmas and emphasis on moral reasoning and justice as the core of morality as ‘a package’; impetus to reconsider came from cross-cultural research on Confucian morality in mainland China pre-1989 and moral thinking and behaviour of remote communitarian societies in Papua New Guinea, on which Kohlberg’s individualistic perspective had no comment; ‘you want to be surprised by your research..
   . you want to find things that are not easily explained’; there is progressive, developmental, change to reasoning through stages, but reasoning is not all there is to morality; 5-year study of parenting; showed Socratic approach, with encouraging support, more effective than lecturing; taking child’s perspective rather than using parent power; anecdote involving daughter; comparison between his and his wife’s parenting approaches; role of grandparents.
  · Gender and morality: early Child Development paper most highly cited and reprinted many times; examined Gilligan’s claims based on anecdotal evidence that Kohlberg’s model down scores females in moral development and women speak in voice of care and responsibility, not justice; his research found those claims not true when reasoning about hypothetical dilemmas but sometimes true when reasoning about self-reported dilemmas, being related to the nature of dilemma reflections and orientation of response, not sex.
  · Methodologically sound research and real-life moral dilemmas: conducted 1000 plus interviews in which people related own moral dilemmas from personal experience, how and extent to which observations and decisions framed; role of moral awareness, moral sense, expertise with moral issues, power of morality as an evaluative tool.
  · Character: 2019 Kohlberg Memorial Lecture reflected work on a more full-bodied account of moral functioning over many years; his lengthy study of Canadian extraordinary volunteer moral exemplars revealing of moral functioning and what supports moral excellence and moral character; exemplars demonstrated ability to reconcile agency and communion – pleasure and fulfilment in supporting others – and higher frequency of seeing positive benefit out of a negative experience; character does make a difference and cannot all be attributed to situational factors (see ‘Paradigm assumptions about moral behaviour: an empirical battle royal’ (2012)); having a strong mentor, being exposed to poverty, need or injustice in early life and having morality at the core of identity are all relevant to acting exemplarily, sometimes heroically. Would have liked to have written a book about the moral exemplars; reasons and reflections on why not.
  
  
• Mentorship and service: working with bright students, as mentioned in profile, several of whom became current professors and clinical psychologists in private practice; students ‘moved me in ways I had not intended and opened my eyes to areas of research or ideas that would not have occurred to me’; three won AME Dissertation Award and one also the AME Good Work Award; mostly collaborated with students rather than colleagues. Service within UBC on many university committees with regard to its functioning, including graduate student policy and violations, and, in semi-retirement, still handles academic misconduct cases; wanting to continue connection with and contribution to university and fascinated by people confronted by their moral failure and to try to ‘engineer some sort of redemption’ in an educational setting, development of self-awareness about behaviour, accepting, not deflecting or denying blame; some students grateful for check on early pre-professional tendencies; importance of administrative justice; discussion of increasing cases related to AI and academic integrity.
  
  
• JME and AME: ‘fun’ 25 years of service on JME Editorial Board 1992-2011 and 2017-2023, with competent people from a range of backgrounds and disciplines and journal with broader interest than specific psychology journals; journal reviewing ‘gives a bit of influence on the field’, ‘being a gatekeeper of quality of work is a big responsibility’; at least 25 years’ service in many roles on AME, 8 years on the Board and as President, 1995-8, during which he sorted out the manual and by-laws; one of his primary academic homes since 1985, with friends and colleagues; encouraging organisation to go beyond N. America.
  
  
• Awards: several from beginning of career, including: Kuhmerker Career Award in 1994, for teaching and from both the Canadian and American Psychological Associations of which he is a fellow.

Recording

Conversation between Monica Taylor and Larry Walker