Oleg Podolskiy
M. Sc. Psychology, Moscow State University
PhD student at the Department of Education, Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg
Abstract
To explore adolescent moral development and moral competence it is important to develop an instrument, which would make a moral dilemma content explicit for subjects and assist adolescents to make a proper decision.
We suppose that a specially designed movie could be used as a tool for representing a moral dilemma core to develop essential motivation and inclusion of viewers in the presented task, to present a realistic content of the problem situation and to present the context of this situation as a whole, and finally to make explicit the emotional peculiarities of the situation.
The new method to assess adolescent moral competence has been tested in few secondary schools of Moscow, Russia in 2002-2004 (participant’s age 13 – 16 y.o., N=250). It has been found that this new method allowed to objectify the content of a moral dilemma much more effectively than a traditional, written manner did and consequently revealed more adequately the level of adolescents’ moral competence.
Keywords: adolescence, moral development, moral competence, educational diagnostic video, audiovisual representation of moral dilemma
Introduction
Moral development is a major topic in a present-day society, that offers human beings a lot of contradictory moral values and orientations. This problem is especially important in adolescence, when a young, developing person with his/her forming outlook is required to determine his/her own values.
As several contemporary studies of moral development have shown (A. Podolskij, Karabanova, 2003), it is very difficult for adolescents to identify the moral content of a practical social situation, to distinguish it from other content in the same situation. To explore adolescent moral development and, in particular, moral competence it is important for the researcher to have at his/her disposal an instrument to make a proper moral dilemma content explicit for an adolescent participant and stimulate the subject to make a proper decision.
The present research study is aimed to compare two ways of presenting moral dilemma (in written manner and as a visualized presentation of moral dilemma by means of a specially worked out instructional film) to assess the one, which provides subjects with bigger opportunities to extract the core of this moral situation.
Competence and Moral Competence
To define the “moral competence” concept we have to understand how the term “competence” is defined in general.
Generally, we use in our everyday language such terms as “competence” or “competent person” without being able to precisely define or clearly differentiate them. The use of these terms as synonyms is reflected in dictionary entries as well, for example, competence is defined in the Webster’s dictionary as “fitness or ability”. Words given as synonyms or related terms are “capability”, “capacity”, “efficiency”, “proficiency”, and “skill”. Competence in different subjects of science like philosophy, psychology, linguistics, sociology for instance still yields a wide variety of definitions. Nonetheless, in all disciplines listed above, competence is interpreted as a roughly specialized system of abilities, proficiencies, or skills that are necessary to reach a specific task or goal (Weinert, 2001).
The wide variety of meanings given to the concept of competence is seen not only in its many uses, but also in the construction of terminology to express competence, such as media competence, business competence, age competence, and also cognitive, social, motivational, personal. It is not possible to discern or infer a coherent theory out of these many uses. “There is no basis for a theoretically grounded definition or classification of competence from the seemingly endless inventory of the ways the term competence is used” (Weinert, 2001, p.46).
Hence we can assume that definitions of competence posed by researchers, grounded in a certain theoretical basis, can reflect only their subjective view on the object studied. The same “conditions” are related to the morality and to the problem of moral competence specifically.
Lawrence Kohlberg has defined moral judgment competence as the capacity to make decisions and judgments which are moral and to act in accordance with such judgments (Kohlberg, 1964). So we assume the definition by Kohlberg be quite broadened that deprives an opportunity to measure validly the concept in genera, and we’ll define the moral competence later. First of all we accept the definition of competence as ability to reason and judge, determined by knowledge and comprehension of certain subject.
Certainly, reflexy, as a “process of mental self-perception” (Psichologia. Slovar’, 1990) is of a great importance in competence development. Reflexy is divided into personal and intellectual domains. (Semenov, Stepanov, 1983). Intellectual reflexy assumes several functions; determination and aiming, questioning, estimation, prediction and confirmation. Personal reflexy plays a role of self-esteem and motivation (Semenov, Stepanov, 1983). The reflexive system can be defined as a “system, which is able to describe one’s behavior and during further actions use obtained description as certain rules, principles, and algorithms etc.” (Rozov, 1987, p. 36).
The process of decision-making plays a part in, or may even define moral competence. Accordingly, we have take into consideration its five fundamental skills; structuring decisions, assessing beliefs, assessing values, combining these beliefs and values into coherent choices, and having a metacognitive understanding of one’s abilities. For each skill, performance can be defined in terms of either accuracy related to an external criterion or consistency among responses (Dawes, 1988; Yates, 1990).
Decision structuring as the backbone in the process of decision-making involves identifying the elements of a decision: (a) alternative courses of action, (b) potential consequences of those actions, (c) sources of uncertainty (regarding which consequences will follow each action), and (d) strategies for integrating decision-relevant information. Evaluating this ability requires presenting individuals with open-ended tasks (Parker, Fischhoff, 2001). Thus moral competence, as the object we are examining, may be defined by its three components (Sadokova, 2001):
Self-competence – the ability to adequately perceive oneself as a subject of moral interaction, to realize one’s interests, intentions, aims, motives, feelings and value definitions caused by moral conflict, and possible ways of behaving in a situation involving a moral choice;
Competence in partner – an ability to perceive other individuals participating in that situation, to understand their aims, interests, motives, feelings, system of values and possible actions adequately;
Competence in situation assumes an ability to have an integrated view of the situation, to analyze consequences of events, to comprehend the values and norms which participants of that situation are guided by and to take into account all the peculiarities of the conflict and the individuals involved in it.
Due to the system of psychological conditions the development of moral competence is provided, this system is organized by a number of mental processes, namely: objectivation, decentration, analysis, reflexy and hierarchy (Karabanova, 2001; Podolskij, Karabanova, 2003).
1. Objectivation (opening and making clear) of the moral norms content. This is the first task and individual faces during his/her moral growth – to clarify the social meaning of the behaviour. The individual focuses on the interests and motives of other people and tries to make clear the consequences that his/her action has on the well-being and emotional status of other persons. Objectivation is an essential point in the genesis of the moral choice and moral action.
2. Decentration – coordination of the different possible perspectives to consider one problem, where interests and needs of the participants are opposite. Only in this case can we deal with moral dilemmas and moral choice. Both cognitive and emotional components are involved in the decentration. The adequate and accurate perceptions of the feelings of the partners in the social interaction promote the coordination. The empathy and taking into consideration the emotions of the partner, the ability to interpret his/her behaviors improve social interactions and provide the decentration. The contradiction of the participants’ interests facilitates the process of decentration, because it makes evident the necessity to appreciate the perspective of others in order to satisfy all needs. The role-taking helps to clear the position of the others and leads to the decentration in moral reasoning and moral behavior.
3. Analysis stresses the importance of the cognitive processes in moral competence. Analysis is intended to distinguish essential and nonessential (accidental) elements of the problem-situation (like moral dilemma is), helps to predict the following and future consequences of the behavior, to take into account a moral meaning, and to evaluate the importance of the different behavioral alternatives for the person.
4. Reflexy – the representation of the content and foundation of the moral norm and moral choice in a verbal form. Reflection is a process of a great importance, which determines the level of generalization and consciousness of the moral action.
5. Hierarchization is the final step in establishing the individual’s moral position, which expresses his/her attitudes towards moral norms, standards, evaluations, and patterns. Moral choice and final decision is based upon the hierarchical relationships between moral norms, differing by the content (for instance, justice sharing and helping behavior). According to the age-related developmental approach by L.S.Vygotsky and D.B.Elkonin, the regularities of the moral norms acquisition depend on the objective content of the norm, or on the regulative principles derived from the generalized social activity and interrelations.
All these processes – objectivation, decentration, analysis, reflection, and hierarchization are not consecutive in the time perspective, but form the developmental structure with causal dependence and makes valuable contribution to moral development and enhancement of a new, higher level of moral competence in particular.
Assuming that adequate orientation in moral situations is the basis of morally competent behavior, we can assert that such competence would be realized in a case when the participant is able for objectivation of such situation and features of moral situation, to analyze it, and consequently plan and carry out certain behaviors. Morally competent behavior depends on the presence of corresponding means – objectivation, analysis etc.
Finally, the “Dual aspect theory” (as a core aspect for constructing the G.Lind’s Moral Judgment Test) states that for a comprehensive description of moral behaviour, both affective and cognitive properties need to be considered. The affective aspect informs us about the direction or orientation of human behaviour, and the cognitive aspect – about its structure and organization. Both aspects are needed to achieve a comprehensive description of human action and each contributes in a unique way to the prediction of external criteria. A full description of a person’s moral behaviour involves a) the moral ideals and principles that informs it and b) the cognitive capacities that a person has when applying these ideals and principles in his or her decision-making processes (Lind, 2003).
Probably nobody would oppose the notion of the “dual nature” of moral behavior nowadays. This assumption is of great importance, but another question – “How could emotions, and especially moral emotions, affect moral behavior?” has to be taken into consideration as well.
Emotions and moral emotions – the impact on moral competence.
Throughout the history of moral philosophy the problem of moral judgement has been the «centre of attraction» of scientific discussions. During this time the question of interrelations between morality and emotions neglected and viewed suspiciously (Solomon, 1993).
The criticism that emotions are irrational was not new with Kant (Plato, for instance, argued for the irrational nature of emotions in his Phaedrus). However, Kant extended this criticism, pointing out the particular problems they posed for moral reasoning and decision-making. Kant characterized emotions as non-moral influences at best, immoral at worst.
Assumptions that are based on the notion that emotions negatively affect moral judgments are based upon the following premises: 1) Emotions are always partial, arbitrary, and passive 2) Moral judgments should be impartial, well-grounded, and freely made and therefore 3) Emotions are detrimental to moral judgments, and are to be avoided in moral decision-making (Pizzaro, 2001).
Pizzaro refutes this characterization of emotions on empirical grounds by arguing the following:
1) People are endowed with the capacity to regulate emotions, and on many occasions are able to effectively induce or suppress emotional reactions through a variety of tactics, allowing us to recruit emotions when appropriate and lending flexibility to our emotional lives.
2) Emotions are not vacuous reflexes devoid of rational influence. Rather, emotions reflect pre-existing concerns, such as our moral beliefs and principles, making them less capricious than may appear.
3) Emotions might be included in the process of moral reasoning; rather than defeating the reasoning process, emotions can actually aid reasoning by acting as a centralizing agent, focusing our attention and cog¬nitive resources on the problem at hand.
Pizzaro concludes that “these characteristics make emotions desirable for the process of moral decision-making” (Pizzaro, 2001, 358).
Thus, Pizzaro confirms the interaction between emotions and moral judgment, highlighting the role of empathy as the most significant, truly moral, and a very important emotion (Pizzaro, 2001). Modern researchers also define such moral emotions like guilt, shame (Eisenberg, 2000), anger, disgust, contempt, and embarrassment (Haidt, 2003). However, empathy is still marked out as the most significant one, for the reason that it expresses one’s concern about another person, especially in problem situations.
Empathy has been implicated by developmental psy¬chologists (e.g., Eisenberg, 1986; Hoffman, 1987), social psychologists (e.g., Batson, 1991), and philosophers (e.g., Blum, 1980) as a component of psychological functioning, which is necessary for individuals to be moral. The main feature of this claim is that empathy entails imagining someone else’s emotion that is consistent with perceiving empathy as a state in which one apprehends this emotion without necessarily being in the corresponding emotional state.
There are modern approaches to empathy. Eisenberg defined empathy in affective terms as “an affective response that stems from the apprehension or comprehension of another’s emotional state or condition, and that is similar to what the other person is feeling or would be expected to feel” (Eisenberg, 2002, p. 135). This means that in order to have empathy with another person one may have to imagine his/her emotions. It is possible to evoke emotions similar to those of another person by simulating having his/her beliefs and desires, or by imagining being in his/her situation (Nilsson, 2003). Harold adds that “empathy requires not only imagining the emotion of someone else, but also feeling an emotion that is similar to the emotion of this other person (Harold, 2000, p. 343). Pizzaro states that the presence of moral emotions is affected by the individual’s moral beliefs. Because of this, emotional reactions can be reliable informers of the moral priorities of an individual, significantly weakening the claim that emotional reactions are merely non-cognitive, reflexive responses (Pizzaro, 2001). Hoffman assumed that empathy and moral principles complement each other in order to produce moral behavior. Empathy is the motivation for acting morally in the first place while moral principles reduce “empathic bias” and “empathic overarousal” (Hoffman, 2000).
Changes in motivating moral behaviour could take place as a cause of inclusion of affective components: emotions, feelings regarding to other person. Empathic feelings motivate, according to research, people to care for others (for reviews, see Batson, 1991; Hoffman, 2000). Without empathy, moral principles seem to lack the motivating force for people to care for others (Hoffman, 2000). Taking into consideration that situations which include moral dilemma are mostly based on a challenge (or dilemma) and on sacrifice of one thing in favour of another, empathy enables us to reflect on feelings of the participant in the moral situation and consequently is an important sign of a moral task presence in the problem situation. So it seems that empathy is needed to see the situation morally (Thompson, 2001)
Empathy to the participant induces us to consider moral principles that are important for making right decision in a moral situation. The feelings of empathy are nothing else but a signal of morally significant content present in a situation. Thus here we emphasized the importance of empathy, its motivating, informative and signal functions regarding the moral situation.
Presentation of material as a way to discover moral competence.
Mostly all researchers in the field of moral development and moral competence use certain types of problem task presentation material (interviews, written narratives) but not all of them take into account the meaning of its influence on the process of evaluation of moral competence in whole. Kohlberg realized that the stimulus (presentation) materials, but not the way of presenting, and the interviewing method were decisive for defining the level of moral judgement. It is important to use presentation material to:1)acquire high content-rich answers, 2) define the highest level of moral judgement that is possible for the respondent and 3) ascertain the level, on which the participant can use their own moral principles for moral decision-making (Kohlberg, 1984).
On the other hand, George Lind states that moral competence can not be observed or measured by looking at an isolated act (or same acts) of moral behavior, Rather, valuable judgments of a person’s moral dispositions can only be made when we can observe the whole pattern of different reactions to a variety of moral situations (Lind, 2003).
We assume the important role of moral task presentation. To access and finally measure the structure of moral competence one needs to present to the respondent an important (motivating) real-life problem situation, which includes moral dilemma. We will get back to this point later.
Do we still measure moral competence?
Kohlberg was searching for an objective, observable method to evaluate moral competence. The interview method (used by Kohlberg), “… is not identical with the mostly tacit cognitive processes involved in typical moral decision-making processes, and both types of reasoning are not closely enough related to each other to let us regard conscious reasoning as a valid indicator or tacit moral competence. Piaget’s simple-response-method (“Which of these two acts are worse, A or B?”) may considerably overestimate what has been found to be cognitions.. More specifically, the Kohlberg-interview method, which scores the “stage” of conscious moral arguments, is suspected to let us systematically underestimate people’s moral competence” (Lind, 2004, 10).
Lind himself asserts that his diagnostical tool, the Moral Judgment Test was designed for evaluation studies and particularly to measures the core of moral-democratic competencies, namely the ability to make moral judgments and to engage in a moral discourse to solve conflicts and dilemmas and should not be used to make decisions about individual persons (Lind 2003). Conversely, for us, individual moral competence is of a great importance, and this issue addressed in our scientific work.
Summing up one of his papers (Lind, 2004), George Lind states that still there is a wide gap between the concept of moral competence and its measurement, and the results received neither confirm the presence of a certain moral competence, nor disprove this fact.
This conclusion forces us to continue a search for a proper method of investigation and measurement of the subject moral competence.
6 steps forward to moral competence
So we believe that valuable research on moral competence evaluation should aim to develop an instrument, which would sufficiently create preconditions for appearance of empathy and later on objectivate the completeness of moral dilemma maintenance, and would represent a realistic, emotionally signed and motivating for decision making situation, containing moral dilemma in it.
Below, we list six statements, which are highly important for designing a new instrument to assess and evaluate adolescent moral competence:
1) Moral competence may be defined by its three components: Self-competence – an ability to adequately perceive oneself as a subject of moral interaction, to realize one’s interests, aims, motives, feelings and value definitions caused by moral conflict, and possible ways of behaving in a situation involving a moral choice; Competence in partner – an ability to perceive other subjects participating in that situation adequately, to understand their aims, interests, motives, feelings, system of values and possible actions; Competence in situation assumes an ability to have an integrated view of the situation, to analyze consequences of events, to comprehend the values and norms which participants of that situation are guided by and to take into account all the peculiarities of the conflict and the subjects involved in it (Podolskij, Karabanova, 2003).
2) A special stimulus material is to be developed which should be sensitive not only to the cognitive component of moral behavior (“moral reasoning”), but also to its affective component (Eisenberg, 2002; Lind, 2004).
3) The traditional means of presenting a moral dilemma by using short written narratives does not completely meet the above mentioned requirements as it doesn’t highlight the affective component of the moral situation. This causes difficulties for adolescent individuals to comprehend the moral conflict content.
4) The stimulus material should be assessed not only by the moral dilemma objective structure but also by the age-related and culturally specific situational contexts; this would provide a stronger motivation and deepen participants’ involvement in the situational context.
5) The stimulus material should make it easier to “pull” the participant psychologically into the posed dilemma in a way that is personally significant for him/her. It may be provided only in the case where the participant would, in addition to comprehending the objective structure of the situation (who are the participants? what is the origin of the conflict? etc.), also be able to deal with the emotional experience of the participants of moral dilemma; in other words – would be able to empathize with them.
6) We consider that visualized presentation of moral dilemma, as a specially developed film would promote solving the above mentioned tasks (2-5) to a greater extent. Thus this kind of experimental task presentation should be more sensitive in measuring moral competence, than with traditional, textual presentation.
Instructional video as a way to assess adolescent moral competence
In the present day, if one would like to find out define, with support of which information medium one might facilitate an appearance of the greatest amount of emotions, cinematography and television, probably, would lead this list. Cinema was and still is an unlimited space where billions of people of different ages, sex and religion meet each other for the same goal – to experience and express emotions.
Modern society is filled with cinema culture, TV and video films and is absolutely unimaginable without them. Movie production industry offers us a way to achieve an exciting and multisensory experience, but for some of us cinema is still the place where we can “watch, deepen and to sense”. But an exclusive ability of the movie is to transmit the same emotions to different people.
Classical cultural workers in the movie production such as Sergey Eisenstein defined emotions as a one of the general goals, which the film director aims for while shooting the new movie. Andrei Abazin shared this notion, striking out the importance of ways to achieve certain emotions (particularly underlying the role of reality). In the present day, we can define a number of special techniques that create necessary emotional atmosphere like light, camera movement, actors’ performance, sound, music, narrative style, genre shifts, etc.
Several researchers highlighted the meaning of identification with actors’ role in the movie as a central mechanism of emotional origins. Identification with a movie hero (any kind of role) never appears in a “vacuum” or separated from the situation as a whole. The viewer is not only finding him/herself with an actor description, but with the defined place of the actors’ role in the whole narrative and its relation to other roles. Identification with an actor could appear only in the case of complete understanding of situation and complexity of actor relations.
At the same time, movies do not oblige an audience to feel any emotions. More adequately is to say, that certain movies invite us to feel emotions. An audience has a right to accept such invitation, or to refuse it – it depends on whether the audience is an “educated” one, in a sense of abilities to “read” the keys to identify these emotions. (Smith, 2003)
Modern audiences, in general, could be called quite “educated” in comprehending movies. In particular, we can say this about a young audience, whose development depends more and more on this audio-visual source of information.
With the aid of the audio-visual medium we are able to conduct the presentation of the special problem in the best way and represent the situation that are inadequately described with a by words only. The movie can “heat up” the high emotionality of a conflict or interpersonal relations in the conflict situation, which are of a great instructive value (Meisel, 1998).
Preferences of dramatization implemented in the context of the instructional format are also sufficiently clear. For example, movie production, which includes actors performance, artistic arrangement and many other expressive tools, enables us not only to focus our attention on the key frames including educational situations, but also to highlight the special mood and “atmosphere” of the situation so that an audience would be able to feel (especially it could be important for moral situations).
Dramatization partly plays a role in creating the emotional context of the situation, as a way to assure the viewer reflects on the core idea of the movie (Deighton, Romer, & McQueen, 1989). Surely there are also several hidden dangers, like if the actors’ performance is conceived as unnatural, or disrupts the expectations of the audience. In this case it is no longer considered the perfect aid to present a certain message (Hoban, 1953). If the dramatization is not truthful, it could lead to an unpredictable reaction of the audience, and it would consequently switch the viewer perception of the presented contents.
Integrating different literature sources (Meisel, 1998; Picciotto, Robertson, & Colley, 1989; Schramm, 1977; Ziegerell, 1991; Wetzel, Douglas, 1994) we can define additional key features, of the abilities and preferences of video-technologies for educational settings:
1) Information could be presented in visual way quite effectively: animation, speech, music, sound effects and static graphics can later be integrated in the movie. Written printed information can not be as vivid, impressive and memorizing as a video.
2) Reality. Video can represent the contents of behaviour, processes, situations and events that (possibly) take place in reality.
3) With the assistance of video, we can observe such complex actions, which couldn’t be presented by any other way.
4) Dramatization (comparatively with real events) enables to present the complex situation in a particular way, and to attract attention of the audience to the key, instructionally important points.
5) Movies can be edited, updated and remade relatively easy.
6) While making videos there is a possibility to support it with different audio tracks which enables to produce Multilingual movies
In spite of all the advantages of the video medium there is still a strong possibility to that the viewer could be disappointed with low quality material. In this case, everything that could be counted as an amateurish, non-professional, boring or too ordinary (the list of possible negative characteristics could be continued) probably would lead to rejection of further watching (Picciotto, Robertson, & Colley R., 1989).
While making educational movies, one has to take into account a huge number of factors, not only for keeping the interest of the audience, but mainly to represent the idea and the message of the movie. Using special techniques in educational movie production, we can present the real state of a situation and their relations. In this way, the audience unintentionally becomes involved in an artificial situation, as though it were taking place in the reality.
We do not aim to retell the story of the cinematography, theories of movie production, script production, actors performance, and movie directing in general. Rather, we intend to underline briefly some of the techniques which have to be taken into account in the making of instructional movies.
Movie length. While making the special instructional audiovisual programmes it is important to avoid long and boring movies. The most useful are short ones. This is based on the assumption, that long movies can cause passiveness, or “passive watching”, when the audience stops to assess the content of the movie critically and precisely (Elliott, 1984). Some of researchers (Baggaley, 1973; Trenaman, 1967; Vernon, 1953) stress the importance of movie length, which might be limited to 25-30 minutes. Regardless to the motivational abilities of video, an older audience loses interest while watching the movie much faster than a younger one (Wright et al., 1984).
Sound effects. The necessity and efficacy of using sound effects in movie production is appreciated quite contradictorily, regardless of its ability to arouse and keep the interest of the audience while watching. Sound effects increase the attention of young audience (Alwitt, Anderson, Lorch, & Levin, 1980; Anderson & Levin, 1976; Bryant & Zillmann, 1981; Calvert и Gersh, 1987; Calvert, Huston, Watkins, & Master, 1982; Calvert & Scott, 1989). Sound markers (provoking sound effects) are used in movies as an effective instrument to highlight important key frames, expanding performance capabilities of instruction (Bryant, Zillmann, & Brown, 1983; Calvert & Scott, 1989; Watt & Welch, 1983).
Music. The main goal of the musical background in the movie is to create a special atmosphere. Music can stimulate the audience to feel concern with the movie actor, to feel emphatic, to “fit” his happiness, fear, disappointment for instance. (Gianetti, 1987; Zucheman, 1949).
Humour if relevant to the core concept of the movie is used to attract attention as a valid and effective technique for educational media making (Lesser, 1972, 1974).
Summing up we need to underline the fact that the importance of medium, and specifically the audio-visual medium (such as a movie) in Education and Instruction could be defined only if its key functions and preferences are defined.
Additionally we have to stress that, technology or a medium would never lead the process of development, but might follow side by side with it, providing new abilities for education. So the video-technology can’t be examined and used as an original, self-contained, separated from the context studied, tasks and objectives of education and therefore we have to take to account not only technological preferences of such medium (like video is) alone, but only with close interaction with its psychoeducational context, and here namely with moral competence assesment.
On the basis of psychoeducational analysis (Eisenberg, 2002; Haidt, 2001; Lind, 2004; Pizarro, 2001) and instructional technology literature (Elliott, 1984; Meisel, 1998; Romiszowski, 1988; Smith, 2003; Wetzel, 1994) we supposed that a specially designed diagnostic movie could be used as a way of representing a moral dilemma to enable the following:
1) To develop essential motivation and consequently the inclusion of viewers in the core of the presented task.
2) To present a realistic problem situation content, and at the same time to present the context of this situation as a whole, showing interests and aims of the participants of the situation in question.
3) To make explicit the emotional content of the situation in question: especially feelings and attitudes of the situation participants.
Empirical study
During 2003-2004 a new method for assessing adolescent moral competence was tested at secondary schools in Moscow, Russia.
The general question of our experiment was: How does the presentation of problem task (which contains moral dilemma) affect measurement and analysis of adolescent moral competence?
Therefore we stated the following goals of experimental study:
1) To develop special scenario, to prepare and shoot a film, containing dramatized moral dilemma.
2) To define the criteria using expert appraisal, which would characterize adolescent moral competence whilst solving tasks with moral dilemmas. This would help to develop a special testing method (experimental questionnaire).
3) To form comparable experimental and control groups with a relatively equal initial level of moral competence.
4) To conduct experimental research, aimed on examination of video-dramatization as a mean of studying adolescent moral competence development, compared with textual form of moral dilemma presentation.
5) To examine the results of research regarding significant differences among participants of different ages and gender.
Characteristics of the sample
The sample consisted of 250 students of the 6th and 9th Grades, aged 11-16 (49% male and 51% female) from the Secondary School N798, Moscow with profound study of English, and Secondary School N1115, Moscow.
Hypotheses
General hypothesis: visualized presentation of moral dilemma using a specially shot film, will more adequately take into account psychological features of adolescents and characteristics of adolescent moral development. Thus, it is expected that significant differences will be found between the visualized and textual presentation of moral dilemmas.
Minor hypothesis; differences in the success of the different types of presentation may be related to age and gender differences of participants.
Procedure and Method
A prototype of the test “Moral Dilemmas” was used to evaluate the level of moral competence in the samples. This test was developed in the framework of the international project “MAMOS” (Podolskiy, Karabanova, 2000). In the recent study two problem tasks (situations that contain moral dilemmas of (at least) two contradictory moral norms) were used, which were similar to the ones used in that project. These tasks were “Julja” and “Misha”, and were used in both groups (control and experimental) correspondingly as a pretest and as a main part of the study. In the task “Misha” the hero of the story appears in a situation of a moral choice between two principles: to tell the truth and to keep confidential relations with parents, but, thus, most likely to be upset and to upset his friend, or, having deceived parents to spend time together with the friend. In the problem task “Julja” the dilemma was between two controversy wishes – to say the truth and to have the worse grade for the whole year (which is important for the main hero) or to tell lies (and say the wrong grade for assignment) and probably as a consequence to break good relations with a teacher.
Based on the methodology of developing instructional films, professional experience and intuition, we wrote a scenario of a film, which was shot, cut and recorded as a short instructional video (diagnostical movie “Misha”). In accordance to this scenario an equivalent textual version of the problem situation was prepared.
Regarding the structure of moral competence, special questions were devised (later on they determined the contents of questionnaires for tasks “Julja” and “Misha”) to analyze each component of moral competence: comprehension of own aims, motives and position in problem situation (in dependence on its outcomes), orientation in goals and intentions of participants of the situation, opposition of their interests, intentions and goals, an ability to guess possible reasons for their behavior on the basis of analyzed leading motives, understanding the feelings of other people – participants of this situation, and a capacity for sympathize them in different outcomes, etc.) In total 11 questions (including 1 subquestion) were presented to the subjects in the pretest. The examples of the questions are: “What feelings does Julia experience?”, “Wherein lies a conflict of this situation?”, “How Julja can reason in this situation?”, “What would happen if Julja says truth?” etc.
19 questions (including 4 subquestions) were presented to the subjects in the main study. The examples of the questions are:”What feelings does Misha experience?”, “What do you think of heroes (i.e. participants of the situation)?” (all three subquestions – 6a, 6b, 6c), “Wherein lies a conflict of this situation?”, “How this situation is seen by parents’ eyes?”, “Do you think Misha’s position to be right? Why?”, “How Misha can reason in this situation?”, “Aims of whom can you find in this situation mostly worthy?”, “What do you think about friendship between Misha and Snake?“ etc. Subjects’ responses were evaluated on the base of the specially elaborated assessment criteria; accordingly every answer has got one or another quantitative meaning.
The questions were constructed in an open-ended form so not to limit respondents’ ability to demonstrate their comprehension of the problem situation. These questionnaires were the same both for the participants to whom the written task has been presented and for those who watched the experimental movie.
In addition to the questions reflecting components of moral competence, we developed an “empathy index” as a special independent variable. This index is supposed to be very important one, because it shows the extent to which the teenager has placed themselves in the situation of moral choice. The index is defined by the comprehension of situation and emotional experience of the main subject of dilemma (in relation of whom the empathy has appeared). The empathy index was determined for pretest and main study separately, as an integrative sum of answers on the following questions: “What feelings does Julia experience?”, “Whether you have experienced feelings like Julja had, while getting to know her difficult situation?”, “Wherein lies a conflict of this situation?”, “How can Julja argue in this situation, making a decision how to act?”– for the task “Julja”, and “What feelings does Misha experience?”, “Whether you have experienced feelings like Misha had, while getting to know her difficult situation?”, “Wherein lies a conflict of this situation?”, “How can Misha argue in this situation, making a decision how to act?” – for the task “Misha”.
The control group solved moral tasks using written narratives both in the pretest (written problem task “Julja”) and in the main part (written problem task “Misha”) of the study, and the experimental group solved the pretest task using a written narrative (written problem tasks “Julja” similar to the one solved by the control group students) and watched the experimental movie “Misha” in the main part.
The pretest and the main part of the study were performed with an interval of three days.
Results
Pretest results
The main result of the pretest was that no significant differences between control and experimental groups in solving the tasks “Julia” has been found.
No significant differences were found between control and experimental group subjects also what regards to the “Empathy Index”. Interesting to add that a significant difference has been found between male and female subjects: the girls (as one might expect) demonstrated sufficiently higher level of empathy than the boys (p=.037)
While comparing answers of senior (9th grade) and junior (6th grade) students no significant differences were found either. The only exception was a question “What might happen if Julia answered honestly?”. At this point senior subjects demonstrated significantly higher results (p=.025) unlike at the rest points.
So we had no hesitations concerning a similarity of the selected groups.
Main part results
As a core result of the main part we found significant differences between control and experimental groups concerning the following questions: “What feelings does Misha experience?” (p=.050), “What do you think of heroes (i.e. participants of the situation)?” (p=.341), “Wherein does a conflict of this situation lie?” (p=.047), “How is this situation seen by parents’ eyes?” (p=.013), “Do you think the Misha’s position to be right? Why?” (p=.003), “How Misha can reason in this situation?” (p=.003), “Aims of whom can you find in this situation mostly worthy?” (p=.003), “What do you think about friendship between Misha and Snake?” (p=.001). Significant differences were also found concerning the “index of empathy” (p=.040)
What can we say about the abovementioned distinctions? First of all, we consider that students from the experimental group could comprehend more complete understanding of other people’s feelings – participants of situation, and also an ability to sympathize them in different outcomes. Secondly, they (experimental group) could give more complete and detailed estimation of the task participants. Thirdly, and it’s quite important for us, it was found that a much higher level of understanding what is “really going on” in the situation, what are the main goals of participants, how they should behave themselves. And finally, fourthly, students from the experimental group showed better results comparatively to their peers from the control group what regards level of empathy with respect to participants of situation.
Also, it might be mentioned that a relatively small size of sample didn’t afford us to make a more detailed analysis of two other independent variables, i.e. age and sex. In other words, we can’t strictly persist on the fact, that received data is the result of experimental procedure only, and does not depend on sex or age of students at all as for that we need to hold on a new study with a much greater sample.
To summarize we can say that the main result we achieved was a presence of significant differences between the control and experimental groups on a bigger part of questions of the experimental task questionnaire. Students from the experimental group showed a more complete understanding of the dilemma participants’ feelings and an ability to sympathize with them in different outcomes of the situation. The experimental group students were able to give more complete and detailed evaluations of all participants of dilemma; they showed a much deeper understanding of what is “really going on” in the situation, what the main goals of the participants were and possible means of behavior in the situation. Hence, students from the experimental group showed far better results and a higher level in all components of moral competence than students from the control group.
Discussion
What can we say about gaining our research goals?
The first and second goals were to develop special experimental questionnaire (based on the structure of moral competence) and to prepare and shoot the film, which would assist adolescents to objectify main components of moral dilemma. Surely these goals were subsidiary for our research, but without solving them we couldn’t address the other goals. That’s why we paid much attention to the theoretical analysis, presented in the recent paper, and realization of outcomes of this analysis in special questionnaire and experimental movie.
As the third goal we had to achieve equalization of compared groups with regards to the initial level of moral competence. To gain this goal, adolescents (6th and 9th-graders) were presented with a task “Julia”. As we can see from the results, control and experimental groups have shown mostly the same initial level of moral competence. Also we have found a lot of differences on many parameters between boys and girls. These distinctions appeared to be more essential than distinctions between junior (6th grade) and senior (9th grade) students. Surely it might be useful to compare control and experimental groups by initial intellectual, emotional and moral development level in pretest. Unfortunately we didn’t have such a possibility.
The forth, and most important goal of main study was to analyze to what extent the form of the moral dilemma presentation would affect the results of problem solving by adolescents. We had every reason to believe that a visualized presentation of moral dilemma as a specially worked out instructional film objectivated main components of moral dilemma and appeared to be more adequate to psychological features of adolescence and characteristics of adolescent socio-moral development.
Concerning our fifth goal, namely to find dependence of the phenomenon studied upon sex and age of students – we leave this question to the future research. At the same time we found evident tendencies: 1) the phenomenon of a moral dilemma presentation form was greater among 9th-grade students. Possibly it could be connected with the fact that presented task content was much closer to the actual problems of 9th- graders. We do not except, that there is also another reason: questions of morality are much more valuable and significant for 14-15 year old adolescents, than to 11-12 year old boys and girls. 2) Comparably greater effect was found among boys. At the same time we must take into account that a considerably greater initial level of mostly all main parameters of moral competence has been demonstrated by girls.
To sum up the performed research, we believe that its main goals were mostly settled (we left the fifth goal not fully solved) and research hypotheses were proved.
We can point out several perspectives of our future research:
1) It is important to study correlation of explored phenomenon with sex and age of respondents more deeply.
2) The contents of moral dilemmas should vary, particularly the type of presented conflict, the structure of dilemma’s participants (coevals, adults, relatives)
3) We’ve left an issue of relations between individually-psychological features of respondents and studied phenomenon open.
Biographical Note
Corresponding author: Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft Albert-Ludwigs-Universität
Rempartstr.11, 79098, Freiburg, Germany
Tel: +49-761-203-2455 Fax: +49-761-203-2458
E-mail: po@nm.ru (O. Podolskiy)
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