Morality in preschool interaction: Teacher’s strategies for working with children’s morality

1. Morality in preschool interaction: Teacher’s strategies for working withchildren’smorality Eva Johansson Göteborg University

2. Aim • What moral values and norms do teachers encourage children to develop? • How do teacher’s attend to the values that children express in their daily interaction with teachers and peers ?

3. Ontology:Guides the investigation and pedagogical practise

4. The life-world: that world that precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks /…/ Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. ix

5. Morality - a result of intersubjectivity

6. Methods • Hermeneutics • Interactions • Interviews • Moral situations • Moral values and norms

7. To understand Others • To understand a friend’s emotional feelings • To understand connections between actions and emotions • To share and support other’s emotions • To understand others’ perspectives

8. To learn morally good strategies • To express one’s own - and respect others’ wills • To express a moral message • Negotiate • To compensate • To share • Wait for one’s turn

9. Set limits • To prevent and to admonish • Consequences - to threaten and to condemn • To avoid moral conflicts • Preventing children’s morality

10. Children’s morality develops through: • empathy • cognition • sanctions and guilt • understanding others’ perspectives

11. Being a good teacher?

12. The good child

13. How can teachers help children to extend their moral learning in pre-school?

14. A question of perspectives

15. Responsiveness: Understanding the other’s condition Act for the good of others L. Blum 1994