Steve Thoma

Profile

Stephen J. Thoma is Professor Emeritus in Educational Psychology at the University of Alabama, USA and was a research fellow in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues housed at the University of Birmingham, UK (2015-2019). He received his BA (honors, Psychology) from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his PhD from The University of Minnesota (Educational Psychology-personality and social development, and in measurement and statistics). Prior to his retirement in 2019, Steve was a University Research Professor and coordinator of the Educational Psychology Program. He also served for seven years as Department Head for the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.

Steve was active in several professional associations including the American Psychological Association (Fellow, Division 15), The American Educational Research Association (Fellow) and Society for Research in Child Development. AME, however, was his academic home. Introduced to the association as a graduate student, Steve attended almost all of the conferences for the next 30 years. In addition, he served as a Board member, Treasurer, Secretary and President of the Association. Steve received the AME dissertation and Kuhmerker Career awards, which he viewed as career highlights. Through AME, Steve became associated with JME and was a board member for over 20 years serving as chair of the board for seven of those years.

Steve’s primary interest is in describing and testing models of moral development. He arrived in graduate school in 1978 when the field was in a period of transition. At the University of Minnesota, a multi-process model building from the dominant Kohlbergian view was beginning to take shape. For someone also interested in developmental methods and statistics, there was much to do and be excited about. His work over the decades focused on the validity of developmental models of moral functioning; describing measures and indices of model components or related processes; and addressing the construct validity of moral measures particularly in relation to verbal ability, political orientation, educational environments, and gender. Thanks to long-term colleagues, he also worked on projects addressing professional ethics education, measuring the application of the virtues in various populations, and assessments of character education.

Following his retirement Steve left Tuscaloosa, Alabama and now splits his time between New York City and the grandkids in Pennsylvania. Not surprisingly, we are now in Pennsylvania more often than in New York!

Conversation Themes

Family background and early years:

Italian background: father’s family background also in the Caucasus and eastern Mediterranean; father to USA as teenager, with older brother, masters at Illinois, PhD at Ohio State and post-doc at Harvard; mother born in extended Italian family on east coast USA; mother gained scholarships, e.g. at Montclair State, and started masters and fieldwork with the anthropologist Margaret Mead at Columbia; meeting of parents; father clinical psychologist in private practice with people needing rehabilitation post-Vietnam war, sometimes included in family life; mother’s Italian family background strongly influential growing up; both sides of family ‘deep and driving interest in education as a means forward’; family stories valuing education.

Education:

Attended small-class experimental schools, open and free, compared with other children’s experiences, as realised when one-year school experience on army base in Germany; led to interest in different learning environments. BA in Psychology (after changes from biology majors and out-of-college experience) at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Interest in measurement and statistics, personality development and educational contexts; chose University of Minnesota for PhD; story of meeting with Jim Rest, showing him round Centre for Ethical Development and considering how he might fit in, took personal interest; as Jim on sabbatical, initially mentored by a graduating PhD student, Jeanette Lawrence (from Australia, later on JME Editorial Board); ‘I always appreciated Jim’, but also ‘a certain calculation, vetted students as to how they might best fit in his work’; but once they proved worthy he gave generous support; also teaching and developing skill set.

The DIT and Stages of Moral Judgement:

At beginning of contact, Jim Rest in mid-career, ‘developed Defining Issues Test (DIT), it had just started to hit its stride, he’d come out of Kohlberg’s shadow a bit’; Rest had worked with Kohlberg in Chicago then at Centre for Moral Education at Harvard; frustration with time-intensive Moral Judgement Interview (MJI) and scoring led to development of DIT; not appreciated by Harvard group seen as ‘quick and dirty screener’; anecdote about ‘hands off screening’; Jim as a neo-Kohlbergian; DIT a distillation of Kohlberg’s dilemmas, but based on real-life answers; description and explanation of DIT: significance of the most important four ranked items, and the ‘P score’; DIT worked as theory suggested but ‘more flexibly’, ‘more or less than’, compared with hierarchical stage dominance of MJI; Blasi’s (1980) paper on the judgement action gap; refining and testing DIT continued with broader reading and learning from affiliated areas, pro-social reasoning, personal and social, clinical; research on ‘the gap’ developed into four-component model: moral sensitivity, judgement, motivation, moral action, each as a cluster of measurable processes and how to combine and support the measure; Mickey Bebeau’s involvement, working on moral sensitivity and with the professions, especially dentistry, ‘politically savvy’, and good communication skills, gave constructive feedback; Steve worked on other ways to influence moral judgement and how it might link with the other processes in his dissertation and subsequently; later social-cognitive schemas; operationalisation; Jim ‘really good at conceptualisation but Mickey good at pitching ideas’. Meeting Darcia Narvaez as a student of Jim’s at AME after he left Minnesota.

University life:

  • 33 years (1986-2019) at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, rose through ranks: Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Chair, Professor, research, teaching and service. Getting to Alabama: few available posts in 1986, wanted research as well as teaching, and suited with wife’s work transfer and family horizons; took post as temporary but roots put down domestically and with university life.

  • in late 80s university prioritised research skills, resources and reduced teaching, new scholars brought in, Steve involved in building university and ‘sucked into’ administration; rankings increased, student numbers increased, both foreign students and from outside state.

  • originally University of Alabama a military academy, for planters’ sons, strong on sports. Surrounding population of deep south approximately 60% white, 40% black; black university students still underrepresented, around 25%; historically black Stillman College locally and universities in Atlanta and Birmingham drew local black students; account of Governor Wallace and historic prohibition on enrolment at Alabama; challenges for black students on campus then.

  • later Professor of Educational Psychology in a different college, ‘new lease on life’, ‘felt more at home there’. After Jim Rest’s death, Mickey Berbeau retired and Darcia Narvaez left Minnesota for Notre Dame, Steve became Director of Centre for Ethical Development which he took back to Alabama; now led by David Walker (previously in military, later Jubilee Centre, University of Birmingham, UK) and more involved in educational processes and character education.

  • later Steve Bryant Professor, personal Chair; University Research Professor, as acknowledgement of career, well-resourced; and, on retirement, Emeritus.

Emphases in scholarly research and publications:

  • around 90 publications in a wide range of peer-reviewed journals (including 5 in JME) and books; regular presenter at Association for Moral Education (AME) and American Educational Research Association (AERA); discussion of respective merits and perceived value of book versus paper publications; lack of a book, ‘kind of regret’, ‘would have been fun’, ‘would have been nice to have had a summary to point to’.

  • early (1986) paper on meta-analysis of gender differences on DIT in Developmental Review, much reprinted (similar small effect to that found by Larry Walker; see Conversation); relationship with Larry and appreciation of his work, similar ideas at similar times, but also ‘frustrating’ as Larry usually ahead with publication; never worked collaboratively ‘he always seemed to have a better network in developmental psych, and he always had a lot of good students he worked with, and my crowd was other faculty’.

  • six requested publications selected were attempts to flesh out different aspects of the four-component model (e.g. on political attitudes and verbal ability (Thoma, et al. (1999) in Review of Educational Psychology) and rebuttals of some critiques of DIT. Some success in showing critiques of Kohlberg’s work were unfair; using methods and strategies from other fields to ‘shore things up’ and show how the field held up (e.g. Thoma et al. (2013) in European Journal of Developmental Psychology).

  • later addressed cultural issues when Research Fellow at Jubilee Centre, Birmingham, UK, utilising his measure focussing on virtues in adolescents and their development in a school project (and for military ethics), across five countries; Key issues: role of loyalty and friendship, differing in individualistic and more socially communitarian cultures; girls outperforming boys, but similar growth pattern cross-culturally (see Thoma, et al. (2019), in Developmental Psychology). Education as a prime mover of moral judgement and social development; importance of keeping open-minded throughout the lifespan.

AME: PhD 1986 AME Dissertation Award, Board member (1987-91), Secretary (1991-6), Treasurer (1996-2001), President (2001-2004), and Kuhmerker Career Award 2004; but not Kohlberg Memorial Lecture; ‘least fun job was the Presidency’, but fun to work with people and how the system worked especially influencing financial policy and development as a charitable organisation dealing with lawyers and federal government.

JME: Editorial Board 1997-2014 and 2017-2021; Chair of Editorial Board (EB) 2006-14, ‘collaboratively’, four years with Monica; Chair of EB was not then on JME Trust; afterwards with Darcia, ‘more independent’; Chair EB ‘outsider facilitator, much more mechanical’, Editor ‘responded directly to the Trust’; better now Chair of EB is also a member of Trust. Editor of Special Issue of JME on DIT (2002).

Awards: Fulbright Scholar, Lilly Fellow, Fellow of American Psychological Association, Fellow of AERA; awards for research and teaching; enjoyed both and broad connection as ‘an agent of the field’.

Recording

Conversation between Steve Thoma and Monica Taylor