Children’s Moral Agency: An Interdisciplinary Scoping Review

Abstract

Inconsistencies have been noted in how moral agency is conceived in childhood, leading to variations in children’s levels of inclusion/exclusion from discussions and decisions affecting them in children’s services and research. Through a scoping review of 261 articles, we examined the different ways in which children’s moral agency is imagined in the literature across different disciplines: education, health, law, psychology, and social services. A developmental psychology perspective dominated the results, while other viewpoints were less prevalent (e.g., children as active moral agents). We discuss how the different perspectives could be bridged to advance more integrated perspectives on interdisciplinary knowledge and practices related to childhood ethics.