An Exploratory Study of Modeling as an Educational Tool for Adolescent Moral Development

The problem of immorality among the youth population is of universal consequence. The youth population refers to adolescents, teenagers, young adults and working-class population. Adolescents are still in the formative years and could be positively influenced towards moral uprightness. Consequently, several authors have attempted to uncover factors associated with immorality and the possible interventions among the youth. Some of the proposed interventions include parental instructions, sermonizing, inclusion of moral instructions in the school curriculum, adverts on media networks, punishment for wrong doing, rewards for uprightness and outstanding virtues among others. However, these studies did not consider the use of modeling as an educational tool for curbing immorality among the youth. Although several policies were also formulated to ensure adolescent moral development, however, none of these policies highlighted the importance of modeling; hence the problem has continued to escalate across many developing countries like Nigeria. It is on this note that this review article was conceived. The article utilizes data from secondary sources to: (i) explain the genesis of immorality among teenagers; (ii) deliberate on developmental tasks involving adolescents’ moral development; (iii) discuss factors that engender moral development through modeling; and (iv) illustrate facilitators of modeling with the aims of making plausible clarifications to parents, teachers, religious leaders and policy makers on how to reduce escalation of immorality to the barest minimum in developing societies like Nigeria.