Peer responses and the development of social conventional, moral, personal, and prudential domains in the elementary classroom
Abstract
The first issue addressed was the degree to which children in the various grades (K,2,4,6), differentiate among the social conventional, moral, personal, and prudential domains of their peers when viewing cartoon episodes. Second, the differences between individual peer responses to cartoon episodes and adjective sorting tasks, at each grade level, for the four domains and responses of the entire grade group, was examined. A total of 48 children, 6 males and 6 females enrolled in the Nyack, NY public schools from grades--K,2,4,6--were interviewed. Each individual child as well as the entire grade group completed two sorting procedures and two probes. In the first sorting procedure the child placed cartoon episodes, representative of the four domains, into four classifications with the first probe requesting the rationale of the order. The second sorting procedure had the child choose adjective responses to match domains, which were domain appropriate or inappropriate with a second probe requesting the relationship of the words to the cartoon episodes. The Mann-Whitney U-Test was utilized to test for levels of significance between the independent grade groups. A significant relationship was found between the kindergarten and sixth grade groups across the four domains of the cartoon episodes. Another significant relationship was found on the adjective sorting responses for females in the sixth grade. Verbal protocols from Probe I responses were analyzed and reasoning justification categories were assigned. A developmental differentiation was apparent between kindergarten and sixth grade among the four domains which was expected. Gender consideration did not emerge as a viable component although sixth grade females on the adjective sorting responses in relation to responses of the other grade groups was significant. The difference in the means of individual responses and group responses was not significant.
Subject Area
Elementary education|Curricula|Teaching
Recommended Citation
Fry-Dick, Diane Louise, "Peer responses and the development of social conventional, moral, personal, and prudential domains in the elementary classroom" (1989). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8918444.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8918444
