Adolescents’ Reasoning about Moral and Ethical Quandaries through Game-play

• In Event: 2-086 - Moral and Civic Development in Adolescence: Approaches to Interpersonal Conflicts and Societal Issues

Integrative Statement

This paper presents findings from a study examining adolescents’ ethical thinking, moral reasoning, and discourse while playing an online game Quandary in peer dyads. In Quandary, players evaluate information and make difficult decisions with no clear right or wrong answers, but with important consequences to themselves and others. Players engage in perspective-taking to decide how community members will be affected by decisions the players make. In the current work, we build on previous moral education research on transactive discourse (e.g., Nucci, Creane, & Powers, 2015) to look for instances of shifts in depth of moral thinking during Quandary game play sessions.
The sample included 51 students (28 girls) in the 5th or 6th grade (aged 10-12 years) from three participating classes. Students were paired for the game play session. Four dyads from each class (12 total) were selected by the teacher to be videotaped and recorded during game-play, resulting in recordings of 24 students. Students completed short-answer pre- and post-reasoning assessments that included moral scenarios, similar to those used by Nucci and Turiel (2009). Research questions were: (a) Did students’ justifications on the reasoning assessments change from before playing the Quandary episode, to after? (b) Did (and if so, how did) Quandary serve as a stimulus for transactive discourse?
Analysis of pre- and post-test scenarios indicated that students’ responses shifted from the pre-test to the post-test. In responses to the pre-test, students were primarily of the mindset: “When you’re in a position of leadership you have to think of everyone.” Whereas in their post-test responses, students were divided between the mindsets: “The protagonist can do whatever they want, they’re in charge of their own body/actions,” and, “When you’re in charge, you get to make the decisions.” In Quandary, there are no right or wrong answers; your decisions necessarily mean that everyone will not have their desired outcome. This suggests, then, students may be internalizing the complexity of leadership involving moral decisions.
Discourse analysis allowed us to examine the dialogue of the pairs more closely to answer our second research question. We focused on a case study of one pair students who demonstrated multiple instances of operational transacts—statements in which the speaker is reasoning about another’s reasoning. These two students were deeply invested in convincing the other that their conception of fairness was the right one. They brought in anecdotes from their own lives and used hyperbole as a persuasive strategy. They also used moral justification criteria, such as generalizability and universality, to evaluate each other’s arguments.
This work represents potential for larger interventions that combine media, ethical decision-making tasks, and peer collaboration. Analyses suggest that students who had meaningful discussions applied that reasoning to the post-test scenarios. Findings from this study were used to inform the development of a school-based curriculum. The presentation will also include the steps outlining the process of creating materials from the current data to best supplement the game and their initial reception in schools.

Authors

• Lacey J. Hilliard, Tufts University
  Presenting Author

• Robyn Ilten-Gee, University of California, Berkeley
  Non-Presenting Author