Preschoolers' Ability to Adopt Justice and Care Orientations to Moral Dilemmas

This study examined the moral reasoning that preschoolers use in resolving moral dilemmas. Children's resolutions and justifications were examined with regard to their care orientation and their justice orientation. Thirty-one preschool children participated in the study (18 girls, 13 boys). Children were each read 4 stone containing moral dilemmas and were asked to resolve these dilemmas. The results indicated that children's answers revealed a care orientation or a justice orientation with equal frequency. At times, children could even accept both orientations to the same dilemma. The data analysis also revealed no gender differences in moral orientation. Results are discussed in terms of children's social-cognitive abilities. Educational implications are also raised.     

A Comparative Study of Moral Development of Korean and British Children

The present study explored Kohlberg's theory of moral development in relation to Korean and British children. A total of 128 Korean and British children aged 7-16 years were interviewed individually using Kohlberg's moral dilemmas, Form A. It was thought that the children in both cultural groups would develop moral stages at a similar rate. However, they showed cultural differences in the use of moral orientations. In addition, it was not possible to match some of the responses from the Korean children to Kohlberg's manual, implying that there are some Korean traditional concepts which affect Korean children's moral reasoning that Kohlberg was not aware of. Thus, Kohlberg's system could be used to examine children's general moral stage but was insufficient to understand fully Korean children's moral reasoning. The present study suggests that the interpretation of children's moral reasoning should be made based on consideration of cultural influence.     

Representation of morality in children: A qualitative approach

ABSTRACT

Previous research on children’s moral reasoning usually used a quantitative approach and a pre-determined set of methods in order to establish early moral landmarks. We proposed a qualitative perspective on the basis of which we have formulated three main objectives: 1) to identify the main categories of behaviors that children spontaneously associate with the notion of morality, in line with Turiel’s Domain Theory; 2) to investigate children’s conceptions of moral and social-conventional rules and 3) to assess the gender differences in the use of care and justice reasoning, in line with Gilligan’s assertion that females are care-oriented and that males consistently use the justice orientation and infrequently use the care orientation. Ninety-two children (57% boys, mean age was 8.19 years) were required to describe morality in behavioral terms without being guided by specific indications from the researchers. Our results reflected a tendency towards morality perceived through behaviors directed towards others, namely through altruism, and also the domination of moral norms as compared to social ones, partially confirming Gilligan’s theory concerning gender specificities regarding moral reasoning in the questions of care and justice.     

A Response

Abstract

Although moral development of children has long been ascribed predominantly to the effects of parenting, there has been little systematic examination of the specific nature of this relation. In this paper, we identify four foundational components of children's moral development (social orientation, self‐control, compliance, self‐esteem) and four central aspects of moral functioning (empathy, conscience, moral reasoning, altruism). The parenting roots of each of these eight psychological characteristics are examined, and five core parenting processes (induction, nurturance, demandingness, modelling, democratic family process) that are related empirically to the development of these eight child characteristics are identified and discussed. Finally, we consider the implications of our analysis for teaching parents to influence positively their children's moral development.     

African American Children's Affective Attributions and Consequences Regarding Sociomoral Events

Research Findings: This study examined 56 young (prekindergarten through 2nd grade) urban-dwelling African American children's understanding of the affective attributions and consequences of 3 types of sociomoral rule systems: prosocial, active, and inhibitive morality. It also tested the relationship of affective attributions and consequences to children's behavior. As expected, children's affective responses differed by sociomoral rule system and character role type, supporting the notion of a “happy victimizer” and a subtle attributional shift. Children provided affective attributions that attempted to resolve the dilemmas presented in the different sociomoral vignettes regardless of the affect associated with the vignette. The relationship of children's affective attributions and consequences to their behavior in school was partially supported. Children's affective attributions were significantly associated with their prosocial behavior. However, contrary to predictions, no other significant associations emerged between children's affective attributions and negative behavior or between children's affective consequences and behavior. Practice or Policy: Those working with young African American children should consider the reasoning behind children's emotional and behavioral reactions and not just focus on the correct or appropriate response to understand and promote children's positive development. There are implications for supporting African American children's competence development at school through a behavior promotion approach.     

Moral Decision-making in Real Life: Factors affecting moral orientation and behaviour justification

The study addresses two separate but related issues in connection with people's real-life moral decisions and judgements. First, the notion of moral orientation is examined in terms of its consistency across varying contexts, its relation to gender and to gender role. Secondly, a new aspect of moral reasoning is explored--the influence on moral decision-making of considering the consequences of an action. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to discuss two personal and two impersonal real-life moral dilemmas. The results reveal a significant interaction between gender role and type of dilemma. However, moral orientation was not consistent across various dilemmas and gender was not related to any particular orientation. Also the results indicate a significant difference between the reasoning of consequences of personal-antisocial conflicts and impersonal-antisocial conflicts. These findings suggest that different moral orientations may be embedded in life experience and connect with an individual's sense of his or her moral identity in real-life situations.     

Family Communication Patterns and Conflict Styles in Chinese Parent-Child Relationships

This study investigated Chinese family communication patterns, their effects on children's conflict styles, and the children's perceptions of parent-child relationship satisfaction. The study found that Chinese family communication patterns are more conversation-oriented than conformity-oriented, and the collaborating and accommodating styles are the children's most preferred and the competing style the least preferred. The children from conversation-oriented families are most likely to use the collaborating style but unlikely to use the avoiding style, whereas the children from conformity-oriented families are most likely to use the competing style but unlikely to use the collaborating style. The finding also indicated that children are more satisfied with the conversation orientation than with the conformity orientation and with the collaborating, compromising, and accommodating styles than with competing and avoiding styles in parent-child relationships.     

The Socialization of Compassionate Behavior by Child Care Teachers

The present study examined how child care teachers' socialization practices and child characteristics jointly predict children's sympathetic-prosocial responding. A total of 25 teachers of 105 five-year-old children were observed during free play with regard to their warmth, non-directiveness and passivity-activity. The children's reactions to distress simulations in two different situations were observed. The children's inhibition and aggression were rated by teachers and parents. More compassionate behavior was shown by girls as compared to boys and by children in classes with warmer teachers; inhibited children showed tendentially less sympathetic-prosocial reactions than non-inhibited children. Furthermore, girls who showed sympathetic-prosocial reactions were rated as more aggressive than girls who did not, and boys who showed sympathetic-prosocial behavior as compared to those who did not were in classes with warmer teachers. The data suggest that child characteristics as well as socialization practices play an important role in children's interpersonal functioning. Among the teacher variables, their ability to interact in a warm, affectionate way is of central importance for the development of emotional competence in children.     

Effective behavior management in preschool classrooms and children's task orientation: Enhancing emergent literacy and language development

This study investigated the relations among preschool teachers’ behavior management, children's task orientation, and children's emergent literacy and language development, as well as the extent to which task orientation moderated the relation between teachers’ behavior management and children's emergent literacy and language development. Participants included 398 children and 67 preschool teachers from preschool programs serving an at-risk population. Teachers’ behavior management was observationally assessed and children's task orientation was measured via teacher-report. Children's language and emergent literacy skills were directly assessed in the fall and in the spring of the preschool year. Hierarchical linear models were used to predict children's residualized gain in emergent literacy and language (i.e., Spring scores with Fall scores as covariates) from their task orientation and their teachers’ behavior management. Task orientation and behavior management each positively predicted children's emergent literacy development, but not language development. There was a significant interaction between teachers’ behavior management and children's task orientation in predicting children's language development, such that high scores on both variables were associated with the most optimal language outcomes. Implications for research and early education are discussed.     

Child Care Changes,Home Environment Quality,and the Social Competence of African American Children at Age 3

Research Findings: Recent work has demonstrated that the changes young children experience in their child care settings before age 5 may be related to subsequent development, especially social development. Several of these studies have included samples of middle-class children, with almost no emphasis on understanding these processes for low-income and/or African American children. This study examined a rural African American sample of children from birth to 3 years of age to understand not only the role of child care changes in children's social development but, in addition, the role played by children's home environment quality. Results suggested that more changes in child care up to age 3 (defined as “big changes” in provider, location, or quantity of care) were associated with lower child care provider ratings of children's social competence. Furthermore, this link appeared to be stronger for children whose home environment was of low quality. Practice or Policy: Policy, practice, and research implications are discussed.     

Gender and social class differences in Japanese mothers’ beliefs about children's education and socialisation

Despite increasing rates of university attendance among women, a significant gender gap remains in socialisation and educational processes in Japan. To understand why and how gender-distinctive socialisation processes persist, this study aimed to examine both middle-class and working-class mothers’ beliefs about gender, education, and children's development. Qualitative analyses were conducted on in-depth interviews with 16 Japanese mothers with preschool children who participated in the research study for three years. The meaning of education differed depending on the children's gender and social class context. While there was a social class difference in mothers’ expectations of their daughters’ educational attainment, the majority of women in this study saw their daughters as caregivers of family members in the future. This study also demonstrates the dilemmas and mixed messages in women's narratives in relation to gender norms and the processes of raising their children.     

Deceitful Behaviour in Situation Comedy: effects on children's perception of social reality

Research findings in the last decade indicated that although situation comedies were most popular with children, most children did not fully understand the moral of stories or the messages conveyed. Psychologists expressed concern that an adequate comprehension of messages in this genre may require complex intellectual operations which young viewers were not capable of. A broadcast presenting deceitful behaviour in a situation comedy, tested among 314 9‐12 year old children in Israel, had no immediate effect on the perception of children vis‐à‐vis norms of behaviour in their surroundings. The degree of understanding increased with age as did the level of children's critical approach and moral judgement of deceitful behaviour in the broadcast. Young viewers regarded negative behaviour presented on the screen as wrong. Evaluations of such behaviours on TV were independent of children's perception regarding the norms of behaviour in their real life environment. The study revealed that even at the age of 9, Israeli children display a high degree of understanding of motives and effects presented in a situation comedy. Sympathy for TV characters was not based on the characters’ moral/immoral behaviour, but rather on their entertaining appearance and quality of acting.     

The role of social competence in predicting gifted enrollment

The purpose of this study is to examine how children's starting level and development of social competence (i.e., task orientation and peer sociability) during kindergarten and first grade predict gifted program enrollment by third grade, even after considering children's cognitive ability. A second purpose is to examine the extent to which the relationship between children's social competence and gifted program enrollment differs depending on children's socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity, and gender. Latent growth curve analyses conducted on 347 children revealed that students enrolled in gifted programming were not only those high in cognitive ability, but also those showing early task orientation. Neither peer sociability's initial status nor growth was a significant predictor of gifted enrollment. Multigroup comparisons demonstrated different predictive paths for higher versus lower SES groups. Implications are discussed including important questions raised by this study and the need for teacher training in the identification of giftedness. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Effects of home environment and center-based child care quality on children's language,communication, and literacy outcomes

This study examined the joint effects of home environment and center-based child care quality on children's language, communication, and early literacy development, while also considering prior developmental level. Participants were 95 children (46 boys), assessed as toddlers (mean age = 26.33 months; Time 1) and preschoolers (mean age = 68.71 months; Time 2) and their families. At both times, children attended center-based child care classrooms in the metropolitan area of Porto, Portugal. Results from hierarchical linear models indicated that home environment and preschool quality, but not center-based toddler child care quality, were associated with children's language and literacy outcomes at Time 2. Moreover, the quality of preschool classrooms moderated the association between home environment quality and children's language and early literacy skills – but not communication skills – at Time 2, suggesting the positive cumulative effects of home environment and preschool quality. Findings further support the existence of a detrimental effect of low preschool quality on children's language and early literacy outcomes: positive associations among home environment quality and children's developmental outcomes were found to reduce substantially when children attended low-quality preschool classrooms.     

Kindergarten child care experiences and child achievement and socioemotional skills

Young children's experiences outside of both home and school are important for their development. As women have entered the labor force, child care has become an increasingly important context for child development. Child care experiences prior to school entry have been well-documented as important influences on children's academic and socioemotional development. However, less is known about the importance of non-parental, out-of-school care for young school-age children's development. Using a nationally representative sample of kindergartners (n = 16,888), this study examined the relationship between child care experiences during the kindergarten year and children's academic and socioemotional skills. Given that the amount of time available for child care is by definition related to the type of kindergarten a child attends, differences in the relationship between child care and child development were explored separately by full- and part-day kindergarten. Results showed that across both types of kindergarten, more hours of center care during the kindergarten year were associated with small improvements in math test scores for all children. Any center child care during the kindergarten year was associated with increased problem behavior and decreased prosocial skills, even after accounting for a large number of confounding factors. Differences by family income and child gender were also investigated. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Different Voices in Nurse Education

Nurse educators, like many of their health care professional colleagues, frequently face moral dilemmas when they identify a student as presenting an unacceptable risk to public safety. In this situation, the statutory requirement of nurse educators to protect the public, under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act (2003), competes with the rights of the student to receive education under the Education Act (1989). Using the different moral voices of justice and care, identified by ), this moral dilemma is examined within the context of one school of nursing in a New Zealand tertiary education organisation.

Overall, the justice voice dominated within the tertiary education organisation. Academic committees, and appeal panels, operating within the educational statutory framework, used democratic processes to reach decisions. The individual committee members, acting as autonomous moral agents, made decisions using universal principles and abstract moral reasoning. The focus was on individual rights, natural justice and due process. Nurse educators articulated both justice and care moral voices. Those with care voices described how they agonised between their duty to protect the public, and their wish to facilitate students, with whom they had built relationships, to succeed. The education management process did not acknowledge the statutory obligations of nurse educators, as registered nurses, or the implications of this within the education context. The moral dilemmas were either ignored, or rendered invisible. As a result of this, nurse educators engaged in various survival strategies, and the broader educational context remained intact and unchallenged.     

The ecology of family day care

The study examined the interrelationships of multiple levels of the family day care system (family, child care, and children) in order to portray the ecology of family day care in a small midwestern city and surrounding rural areas. Fifty-seven children, their mothers, and caregivers (n = 30) participated. Caregiver characteristics, conditions of caregiving, and quality of care in the family day care homes were assessed. Family background information (SES, education, stress, social support, and childrearing preferences) was obtained. Children's cognitive, language, and social development were assessed using static and process measures of each domain. Results revealed that families did not choose caregivers who resembled themselves with respect to SES, childrearing preferences, and stress, nor did they select child care whose quality varied systematically with their characteristics. Family and child care characteristics appeared to have additive effects on children's development.     

Parent involvement in school and Chinese American children's academic skills

The authors examined the concurrent associations of school-based parent involvement (PI), family sociocultural factors, and children's academic skills in a sample of 258 Chinese American children (5–9 years old) in immigrant families. Parents reported their American and Chinese orientations and family socioeconomic status (SES). Parents and teachers rated parents' school-based involvement, and children's English reading and mathematics calculation skills were assessed with standardized tests. Results of path analysis indicated that, controlling for SES, parents' American orientation was positively associated with their self-reported PI. Although parent- and teacher-reported PI were positively correlated with each other, only teacher-reported PI was positively associated with children's English reading. These findings support the benefits of school-based PI for Chinese immigrant children's English reading achievement. Results also highlight the need to consider differences between teachers' and parents' perceptions of PI in developing culturally sensitive interventions to encourage immigrant parents' school involvement.