Moral competence in students from three areas of knowledge

Moral competence is the capacity to make moral decisions or judgments and to act in accordance with them. The aim of this study was to measure and compare such competence among law, civil engineering and medical students at Universidade Federal do Paraná. All students enrolled in these courses were invited to take the moral competence test, resulting in 946 valid responses. Medical students had a C-score of 11.4; civil engineering students, 15.9; and law students, 14. There was no increase in moral competence over the successive academic terms, nor according to age and gender, except in medicine, where scores were higher among female students. Although moral competence was lower among medical students, all scores were low and did not increase throughout the courses, suggesting that undergraduate education did not positively influence this competence. Finally, it was concluded that teaching strategies should be included in future educational planning.