We wished to discover the extent to which different disciplines and their sub-disciplinary
approaches have been represented in JME over 40 years. The theoretical
background of moral education was divided into five main disciplinary approaches
(philosophical, psychological, sociological/cultural, educational and cross-disciplinary/interdisciplinary).
Within these five main approaches we listed 61 sub-disciplinary
approaches (philosophical 15; psychological 13; sociological/cultural 12;
educational 13; cross-disciplinary/ interdisciplinary 8; see Note 1). We selected up
to five sub-disciplinary approaches for each article, which could relate to any of
the five main disciplines when coding; therefore, totalled frequencies are greater
than 100% and it is likely, especially as JME is an interdisciplinary journal, that a
paper was coded as having more than one main disciplinary approach. The mean
number of disciplinary approaches coded per paper was 2.5; it was difficult to
discern theoretical perspectives in some early papers. Table 2 shows the results of
disciplinary approach by decade.