Background: Adolescence is crucial for nurturing motivation in peer relationships and for academic achievement. Although social and academic intrinsic values develop together, the direction of their development remains inconclusive. Aims: This study examined the longitudinal relations between social and academic intrinsic values to clarify their…

Introduction: The Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) identifies innate moral foundations that drive moral judgment, and are assumed to mature at different phases throughout development. However, core developmental aspects of moral foundations, such as normative age and gender differences from an MFT perspective, remain relatively unexplored,…

Religious and Moral Education (RME) in primary schools has been an under-researched aspect of state-funded schooling in Scotland. It has received little scholarly comment, and even less empirical research has been conducted on the extent and nature of provision since the implementation of Scotland's "Curriculum for Excellence" from 2010…

Moral disengagement is a cognitive mechanism that seeks to avoid the feeling of guilt in the face of transgressive behaviors and seems to be present in behaviors such as cyberbullying, cybergossip or bullying in adolescence. Few studies have explored this connection in the primary school years, even though gossip, bullying and cyberbullying are…

Moral reasoning and theory of mind (ToM) are two distinct but related aspects of social cognition. While past research has clearly documented serious delays in ToM development for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) both cross-sectionally (e.g. Happe, 1995) and longitudinally (Peterson & Wellman, 2020) much less is known about the…

Teachers' beliefs about teaching character values are pivotal in cultivating students' character. This study systematically reviewed teachers' beliefs towards character education in primary school. A systematic review following the PRISMA statement was applied to peer-reviewed papers published between 2011 and 2021. This review paper analyzed…

This paper focuses on data from a study of middle- to upper-middle class Scottish S2 ([approximately]seventh grade) students who participated in Inspiring Purpose, a school-based character development program, during the 2016 to 2017 school year. Directed by their teachers, participating youth reflected on values and future aspirations and…

Contrary to previous studies, the present qualitative ethnographic study focuses on free play during primary school recess with an emphasis on the significance of the interaction between play and the socio-cultural environment and the active role of the children in their play. The aim of the study was to investigate children's perspectives about…

Introduction: In the relationship between sports morality and the morality of everyday life, there are no relevant studies and researches to clearly demonstrate the direct connections between sports and moral behaviour. The aim of this study is to find out if there is a significant difference in the achieved level of moral competence of secondary…

The widespread practices of online learning have sparked increasing interest in its educational efficacy. The effects of online learning on learners' moral development remain contentious in existing research. The purpose of this meta-analysis was to ascertain how online leaning impact students' moral development. It included 42 experimental and…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the potential of the drama pedagogy that may contribute to primary children's moral growth in the Chinese educational context. It argues that drama may offer an ensemble-based, dialogic, and narrative pedagogy for teaching morality to complement the didactic traditional model. Design/Approach/Methods: The…

The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the mental health of young children, and schools are being tasked with providing greater support for their emotional well-being. While gratitude practices have proven beneficial for the mental health of adults, less is known about the efficacy of their use in promoting positive character…

Dialogic teaching -- in which teachers and students address controversial issues -- has become increasingly common in school education to promote civic participation in deliberative democracy. This study addresses this question: when leading whole-class discussions on controversial issues, what discursive moves could teachers adopt to enact…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether justifying one's own social knowledge (moral, societal, psychological) toward complex social-moral issues through collaborative argumentation was associated with the improvement of social perspective taking for elementary students. A total of 129 5th graders (52% female, Mage = 10.98) from six…

Our research aims to examine the effectiveness of introducing social robots as educational technology within authentic classroom activities without modifying them to be designed for a robot. We chose as test subject the fifth-grade curricular topic "The role of technology and its impact on society", meeting the critical stage of moral…