Middle school materials for teaching principle-based ethics and ethical decision-making are available at no cost through the generous support of the Daniels Fund.
The 2025 Middle School Ethics Challenge is an essay contest open to sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. Participants were asked to describe an ethical principle and provide examples in school, outside the classroom, and in a career.
Student winners receive a digital badge, certificate, plaque, and $500.
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The Middle School Interactive Ethics Event is an immersive educational resource that introduces students to principle-based decision-making and career exploration through real-life ethical dilemmas faced by professionals across multiple industries.
This resource includes 21 ethics cases related to both middle school scenarios and careers in finance, marketing, and business management; a series of engaging and thought-provoking discussion questions; instructions for facilitating this experience in various educational settings; and more.
It is best facilitated as a half-day event with participation from both an instructor and a group of about 20 to 25 middle-level students. However, it is easily tailored to fit different group sizes, educational settings, and time available.
Our new career exploration course emphasizes introspective and experiential skills as students prepare for their future careers. The package includes a 69-page course guide and 20 instructional modules. Each module in the series is comprised of three resources:
Module components include an ethical dilemma, narrative, discussion questions, online resources, activities, and a journal prompt—everything you need for a ready-to-use lesson plan!
You can access the free course in three different ways:
Developed with the help of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) and a middle school advisory network, these materials include comprehensive, ready-to-use lesson plans that integrate social-emotional learning geared for middle school students. The package includes:
(Prior to download, you’ll be asked to complete a brief survey to help us evaluate the impact of the materials for the Daniels Fund, whose generous support allows us to offer these resources at no cost.)
This course is also available as downloadable PDFs and Word documents, as LMS-compatible files, and online via the Ethics Online portal.
The Ethical Leadership for Middle-Level Students badging exam is now available! The exam assesses students’ knowledge of foundational ethics concepts and skills, including the ethical principles of respect, responsibility, integrity, transparency, fairness, trust, rules and laws, and viability.
Designed for students in Grades 6–8, the test contains 30 multiple-choice items. Students who score 70% or higher on the exam earn a digital badge.
Access now: To request the free ethics exam, send teacher name, email, school, and school address to service@mbaresearch.org.
Badge Criteria
Teaching principle-based ethics is a proven way to help students think critically, manage emotions, develop empathy, build supportive relationships, and make responsible decisions.
We have several resources available for teaching Career and Technical Education (CTE) in middle school—it’s never too early to start exploring!
Click here for feedback on the career exploration modules.
Click here for feedback on the ethics education lesson modules.
We’re proud that our work is informed by middle school teachers, administrators, and counselors who served on our Middle School Advisory Network (MSAN), an advisory board of educators supporting the development of materials that bring ethical leadership to middle school education nationwide.
For a full list of the resources we have scheduled for development through the 2024–25 school year, access our Middle School Resource Guide.
“These are great lessons for school counselors to utilize for classroom lessons, but the sequencing of the modules [is] easy for any teacher to incorporate into classrooms to meet social emotion learning standards. Ethics education is crucial at the middle school level, and in today’s society, this could not come soon enough.”
Visit our Ethics Page for a comprehensive list of our ethics education resources, including:
