Today schools are inescapably, though not deliberately, involved in moral education and teachers are significant agents in facilitating moral thinking and moral conduct. If teachers themselves think and speak and act at levels recognizably below those to which they must lead their students, then structures and processes must be found to promote 'the moral point of view' as an integral part of teacher education, school practice and organization.
It is important to have a baseline indication or benchmark as to where the teachers are at a point in time, so that efforts can be made to promote their own moral thinking and ensure through a well-defined programme that teachers become agents and facilitators of change by promoting higher levels of moral thinking among themselves and their pupils.
This investigation aimed at assessing the level of Principled Moral Thinking of first year student teachers (n .= 210) at four teachers' colleges in Trinidad, using the Defining Issues Test developed by James Rest.