Your question is a bit unclear. Do you mean something like"Moral  rehabilitation?" If so, the simple answer is that there is not much done under the rubric of " Moral Regeneration" but in so far as you are asking a question about  How is one to  act morally after not acting generally morally then the answer is that one should do what one can and strive to follow the golden rule  and seek above al to minimize harming others n the way you usually do> Something like that. 

Robert,

Thank you for your response.

Regeneration is renewal through the internal processes of mind and body. In theology it might be to be born again and the renewing of your mind and the way you think or act. (a being renewed, reformed, or reconstituted).  I presume here we try to rekindle the value that is still there. If there were no moral values taught  to you as a child, you have to teach to person to do that. Regeneration for me is to rekindle existing values.

Rehabilitation then is restoring something that was taken away or destroyed, like drug abuse, deforestation.  In law they also talk about rehabilitation if you were bankrupt.

There might be overlaps that one have to explore and clarify in defining the scope, why one would use regeneration instead of rehabilitation.

Hi JH Wynand Louw, 

Your question has to do with the leading researchers and authors on the topic of “Moral Regeneration” 

If I understand it well, you question deals with two issues: The "moral regeneration" issue and the leading researcher(s) issue, that is, who are the leading researchers and theorists who address the moral regeneration question. 

I experienced some difficulty with the understanding of the exact meaning of the concept of "moral regeneration". As far as I know, such concept rarely appears in the immense literature on moral development and behavior, be it related to philosophers (e.g., I. Kant, J. Habermas) or psychologists (e.g., J. Piaget, L. Kohlberg, J. Rest, D. Narvaez, M. Berkowitz, and so forth). I realize that such concept may often appear among theologians, for example, in those who believe in reincarnation. Note, however, that, as J. Laudan once remarked, “[t]he increase of the conceptual clarity of a theory [or concept] through careful clarifications and specifications of meaning is.one  of the most important ways in which science progresses” (1977,. p. 50). 

In my considerations, I want to follow a secular and scientific, not a religious, perspective.  As such, I look at moral regeneration as if it referred to fostering one's moral thinking and/or behavior through, for example, one's moral education.

As far as I know, moral education has been addressed from three distinct perspectives or theoretical frameworks, each having their leading proponents and defenders: Clarification of values, character education, and justice approach. These three types of moral education ("regeneration?) differ from one another, for example, in terms of the goals they attributed  to one's moral education, their theoretical underpinnings, and methods or ways to implement one's moral education. 

To put it succinctly, in the clarification of values approach to moral education (see, for instance, Howard Kirschenbaum, 2000), parents, teachers/professors should limit themselves to clarifying before their children, pupils/students the meaning of the main moral values at issue in their family, school, community, country, and so forth (e.g., courage, respect, tolerance, citizenship, democracy, honesty, honor, and the like). It is up to the child, pupil/student to decide which moral values s/he wants to adopt and follow. The clarification of values approach to moral education easily leads to the relativistic idea of “laissez faire, laissez aller, laissez passer (i. e., let’s it go), as if morality was a matter of personal choice and preference, or how things are, instead of a matter of how things ought to be, that is, how we ought to relate to our physical and social environment.  

Because of this relativistic tone, by the 1980s, values clarification came under generalized criticism from which is has not recover (see Bennet, 1980), and was replaced by character education, the most popular movement in the field of moral values and education (see, for example, D. Narvaez, 2008). The main goal of character education is to inculcate, transmit, and even indoctrinate a set of values (e.g., respect, honesty, friendship, charity, trustworthiness, and the like) and concrete behaviors, such as cooperation, obedience, telling the truth, to be prosocial, and the like) in children, adolescents, pupils and students. Teachers and parents, for example, should not only teach such values and behaviors to their children/students, but they should also be good examples of those values and behaviors. Theoretically, character education is greatly based on social learning theories, A. Bandura’s social and cognitive learning theory, for example.

In spite of its popularity, character education is not without problems. First, Kohlberg (1981, pp. 2-3), for example, referred to it as if it were a list and “bag of virtues”. One problem with the “bag of virtues” approach is that it equates the teaching of “good” behaviors and virtue with indoctrination of conventional or social consensus morality. Second, how can we preach virtues and abide by them without clarifying their very nature’?  Is it a virtue to cooperate with others in order to steal money from an ONG? Certainly not. Note that although the clarification of individual values is part and parcel of moral education, “…values clarification neither clarifies nor resolves questions of the nature of virtue, about which students and teachers alike must be concerned” (p.3). Third, as Piaget (1964) once remarked  a truth (or a virtue) learnt is only a half true (virtue) because to understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery. Like Piaget, I think that the goal of moral education and moral regeneration is to develop an autonomous morality, a morality oriented to equality and mutual respect, not a heteronomous morality, a morality based on obedience, coercion and unilateral respect (see Piaget, 1932). Accordingly, there is moral regeneration when, for example, a heteronomous moral individual does decide to be an autonomous moral person.

These three shortcomings of the character education approach to moral education (and regeneration?) are not present in the justice approach to moral education (see, for example, Kohlberg, 1981). Instead of appealing to a set of particular, not generalizable and universalizable, virtues, the justice approach appeals to moral principles (e.g., the golden rule), which can be generalized and universalized, or, in other words, would I pass, so to say, the test of reversibility (“Would I advocate the same conclusion if positions, in a conflict of interests and welfare, were reversed?”), and of universalizability (“Did I reach a conclusion that would be acceptable for all at times and places?”). (See Kohlberg & Candee, 1984). Instead of transmitting to individuals conventional or consensus morality, that is, a list or “a bag of virtues” and “good” behaviors (e.g., you should not steal, lie, and the like), the justice approach to moral education aims mainly at fostering one’s moral reasoning and socio-moral perspective, such that one comes to understand, for example, that there are situations in which what is generally seen as morally wrong becomes a moral duty and obligation (e.g., to steal to save a human life). To promote moral development, the justice approach to moral education (and regeneration) often appeals to opportunities of role-taking, discussion of hypothetical and real-life moral dilemmas, and the experience of living in a moral atmosphere, and the like. Kohlberg’s just community approach is a good example of creating moral atmospheres in which individuals have the opportunity to assume moral responsibility and live in a true democratic way (see Power, F., Higgins, A., & Kohlberg, L.1989). Theoretically, the justice approach heavily relies on well-known theories of moral development, for example, Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s approaches to moral development.

All that said, and if I understood it well, moral regeneration can be seen and restored, so to say, from different theoretical frameworks, and through different procedures. Again, I want to say that my tentative answer to your question(s) is a secular, not a religious answer. Because of this, I did not refer, for instance, to confession, which Christian believers can take as a form of moral regeneration.

I hope that I have got your questions and that my answer is of help to you.

Best regards.                   .