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Effects of an intervention for facilitating social reasoning and prosocial behavior in pre-adolescents

University of British Columbia

The purpose of this study was two-fold. First, this study examined the effects of a moral dilemma discussion group intervention on moral reasoning, empathy, perspective-taking, and peer- and teacher-rated prosocial and antisocial behaviours among pre- and early adolescents. In addition, this study sought to investigate the relationship of moral reasoning to empathy, perspective-taking, teacher-rated social and problem behaviours, academics, and peer-rated prosocial and antisocial behaviours. A total of 43 Grade 6 and 7 students participated in the study. They were assessed for moral reasoning, empathy and perspective-taking, teacher-rated social skills and problem behaviours, academics, and peer-rated prosocial and antisocial skills at the pretest and after a 10 week moral discussion group intervention. In order to study the effects of a moral dilemma discussion group, students were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, a placebo group , or a control group. The treatment group met weekly for one hour to discuss both hypothetical and real-life dilemmas. The placebo group met at the same time also for an hour to develop a measure for assessing adults' knowledge of preadolescents. According to moral development theory, a dilemma discussion such as the one used here would be expected to raise moral reasoning and it was hypothesized that there would also be changes in the affect, behaviour, and academics. Participation in moral dilemma discussions was found to have an effect on moral reasoning, social skills, internalizing problem behaviours, academics, and peer-ratings of prosocial and antisocial skills. The second intent of this study was to provide a more complete picture of the relationship of moral reasoning to the school experiences of pre-and early adolescents. The correlational analysis suggested that there are a number of significant relationships between moral reasoning and teacher-rated and peer-rated behaviour as well between moral reasoning and academics. These findings have direct implications on educational planning and curriculum.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2009-01-30

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4003

Special Education

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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