School Attachment in the Schooled Society: A Moral Intuitionist Approach

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 23. Morality, Trust, and Character Education

Abstract

Much of the literature concerning morality and schooling focuses on inequality of access and outcomes or moral education. However, no research focuses on the morality of schooling from the students’ perspective. Given universal expectations about schooling, we explore how school is an obeject of moral concern for students, and whether sources of attachment to school are moderated by students’ moral intuitions. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory and utilizing a unique sample of all secondary schools in Iceland, we examine the association between student’s moral intuitions and their attachment to the social and academic aspects of school, as well as the degree to which moral intuitions moderate the influence of the socializing agents, including teachers, parents, and peers, on school attachment. We find that binding moral intuitions (i.e., those that emphasize the group or society as the center of moral concern) lead to higher levels of school attachment while individualizing foundations (i.e., those that emphasize the individual as the center of moral concern) lead to lower levels of school attachment. We also find that, within the specific subtypes of the binding moral intuitions, authority is negatively related to school attachment, while loyalty and purity are positively related. Additionally, we find that binding and individualizing moral intuitions positively moderate the effect of teacher support and high academic expectations on student attachment but they have no moderating parent and peer support.

Authors

• Kerby Goff, Penn State University

• Eric Silver, Pennsylvania State University

• Inga Dora Sigfussdottir, Pennsylvania State University