| Describe 4 guidelines that provide the framework to help promote moral development in students. | 1. Model ethical thinking, behaviour, and emotions in interactions with students.
2. Use moral dilemmas as concrete reference points for examining moral issues.
3. Use discussions to help students understand and respect each other's persepctives.
4. Use classroom management as a vehicle for promoting moral development. |
| How do we model ethical thinking, behaviour, and emotions during student interaction? | "Almost all approaches to moral education recognises the importance of modeling. If we would teach the young to be moral persons, we must demonstrate moral behaviour for them" (Noddings, 2008, p. 168).
Efforts to be fair, responsible, and democratic in dealings with students speak volumes about teachers' values and views of morality.
Research suggests that a warm, supportive classroom atmosphere supports moral development (Crystal et al., 2010; Noddings, 2008). |
| How do we use moral dilemmas to examine moral issues with students? | As research consistently indicates, most people's thinking is concrete operational, which means that they need concrete examples if they are to develop a meaningful understanding of the topic.
This is certainly true when dealing with abstract issues, such as morality, and it's particularly true of students in elementary schools. Moral issues come up in classes more often than we realise.
For instance, in elementary classrooms discussions about whether it's okay to retaliate if someone on the playground pushes you down, or someone butts in front of you in the lunch line, can lead to meaningful discussions of right and wrong.
With older students, a friend, for example, asks if we think a new hairstyle looks good, and we think it is most unflattering. Do we respond truthfully, and likely hurt her feelings, or do we say it looks good, which is technically a lie?
Many other examples exists, and discussing them when they come up can, in time, lead to moral growth. |
| How do we use discussions to help students understand and respect the perspectives of others? | Moral dilemmas provide concrete reference points, but discussions are the mechanisms that lead to higher levels of moral reasoning. In discussions, the students may offer slightly different perspectives with respect to the issues.
Discussing these differences can lead to advances in moral reasoning. And students generally enjoy the opportunity to express their opinions, particularly when they are not in danger of being judged right or wrong. So discussions such as these are often motivating.
Research suggests that teachers should follow up on the discussion by having the students write a paragraph in which they were asked to justify their moral positions with respect to the issue. Discussions that encourage students to examine their own reasoning combined with exposure to more advanced thinking promotes moral development (Carlo, Mestre, Samper, Tur, & Armenta, 2011; Crystal et al., 2010). |
| How do we employ a classroom management style that promotes moral development? | 1. We must employ a classroom management style that promotes an orderly classroom.
2. There must be simple, clear, rules about respecting the opinions of others during sharing (e.g. reminding the class to not interrupt and allowing people to finish a point before speaking).
3. Highlight though visual aids/posters/art the values we want to instill in the classroom environment such as fairness, tolerance for differing opinions, compassion, etc.
4. Create a learning environment where students understand the rules and why they're important, and agree to follow them. This promotes autonomous morality (Fung & Smith, 2010; Rothbart ,2011). |
| What can we conclude about supporting the many forms of development in students? | In each case, modelling and explicitly teaching the skills using concrete examples are essential.
Then, discussions of the examples combined with a classroom management style that promotes fairness and self-regulation are the mechanisms we use to promote each of the forms of development (personality, social, moral).
We won't succeed with all students, but for the ones whom we do, we will have made an immeasurable contribution to their total education. |
