Poster #36 - Changing relationships between children's moral reasoning and epistemic beliefs

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Cognitive Processes

Integrative Statement

A limitation of much of the research in the area of epistemic beliefs is the lack of a longitudinal approach. The current study investigated longitudinal changes in Australian elementary school children’s beliefs about knowing and knowledge (epistemic beliefs) across three judgement domains (personal taste, ambiguous facts and moral values). The participants were tracked from Year 1 through to Year 3 across 10 elementary schools in south east Queensland, Australia. In Year 1 there were 169 participants (83 boys, 86 girls) aged 6-7 years (M = 6.7, SD = 0.32). In Year 2 there were 156 participants (79 boys, 77 girls) and in Year 3 there were 129 participants (65 boys, 64 girls).
Following Wainryb et al. (2004), children were presented with three scenarios, a moral reasoning scenario, a personal taste scenario and an ambiguous fact scenario and interviewed individually about the beliefs held by two puppet characters. For each scenario, the child was told that the puppets held conflicting beliefs. The child was asked “Could only one be right or could both be right? Why?” The scenarios were varied slightly across the three years of the study to keep them developmentally appropriate for the children’s age and experience.
Responses to the question “could only one be right or could both be right?” were scored dichotomously with a score of 0 indicating objectivism (only one belief could be right) and a score of 1 indicating subjectivism (both beliefs can be right). Changes over time in children’s epistemic beliefs were explored through McNemar test on paired data (Results are presented in Table 1). Results indicated that children’s epistemic beliefs in each of the judgement domains became more subjectivist over time but that the age at which this occurred differed according to the judgement domain in question. Specifically, children were likely to accept that people could hold beliefs different to their own earlier for personal taste than for ambiguous facts or moral values. Numbers of children stating that only one belief could be right versus both beliefs could be right across years and across scenarios are presented in Table 2. As can be seen in the Table, children were much more likely to express objectivist epistemic beliefs in the moral scenario compared to the ambiguous fact scenario and personal taste scenario at each year level.
An understanding of the development of children’s epistemic beliefs in the judgment domain of values can assist teachers to understand children’s moral reasoning in the early years of elementary school. As children shift from objectivist, black and white perspectives to more subjectivist thinking, teachers can play a role in stimulating children to think critically by providing experiences that include analysing conflicting points of view in terms of value judgements (Johansson & Emilson, 2016; Lunn Brownlee et al., 2017). Reasoning about multiple perspectives with regard to diverse others helps children to reject information that is stereotyped (Aboud, 2003). Teachers can support growth in moral reasoning for inclusion by attending to children’s epistemic beliefs in the domain of moral values.

Authors

• Sue Walker, Queensland University of Technology
  Presenting Author

• Jo Lunn, Queensland University of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura Scholes, Queensland University of Technology
  Non-Presenting Author

• Eva Johansson, Stavanger University
  Non-Presenting Author