Teachers’ and children’s personal epistemologies for moral education : Case studies in early years elementary education

While there is strong interest in teaching values in Australia and internationally there is little focus on young children’s moral values learning in the classroom. Research shows that personal epistemology influences teaching and learning in a range of education contexts, including moral education. This study examines relationships between personal epistemologies (children’s and teachers’), pedagogies, and school contexts for moral learning in two early years classrooms. Interviews with teachers and children and analysis of school policy revealed clear patterns of personal epistemologies and pedagogies within each school. A whole school approach to understanding personal epistemologies and practice for moral values learning is suggested.

Moral and social development: teachers’ knowledge of children’s learning and teaching strategies in the early years

The intention of the analysis in this paper was to determine, from interviews with 11 early years’ teachers, what informed their knowledge of children’s learning and teaching strategies regarding moral development. Overall, the analysis revealed four main categories: definitions of moral behaviour, understanding of children’s learning, pedagogy for moral learning, and the source of knowledge for moral pedagogy. Children’s learning was attributed by five of the teachers to incidental/contextual issues. Nine of the teachers reported using pedagogies that involved discussion of issues, in various contexts, as a way of teaching about social and moral issues. The majority of the teachers (n = 7) described the source of their knowledge of pedagogy as practical/observed as opposed to being theoretically informed. There was no clear relationship between teachers’ definitions, understanding of children’s learning, pedagogy or source of knowledge. These results suggests a strong need for the teaching of moral development to be given more prominence and addressed directly in in-service courses so that teachers are clear about their intentions and the most effective ways of achieving them.

Disputes in Everyday Life : Social and Moral Orders of Children and Young People

"The research presented in this volume has been undertaken in a range of settings and across ages, to display the rich, varied, and complex aspects of children and young people's everyday lives. The papers contribute to understanding children's disputes, framed as forms of social practice, by closely examining children's talk and interaction in disputes to offer insight into how they arrange their social lives within the context of school, home, neighborhood, correctional, and cafe settings. As such, this volume contributes to an emerging body of edited volumes that investigate children and young people's everyday interactions (Cromdal, 2009; Cromdal & Tholander, in press; Gardner & Forrester, 2010; Goodwin & Kyratzis, 2007; Hutchby & Moran-Ellis, 1998). Each paper has been peer reviewed, by respected researchers of the field, in some cases authors of this volume, and revised. We also thank Charlotte Cobb-Moore who so ably assisted in the final preparation of the manuscripts."---publisher website

Introduction : disputes in everyday life – Social and moral orders of children and young people

Volume 15 of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth (SSYC) presents a rich description of children’s and young people’s disputes. Children and young people live and experience their youth in a variety of contexts, settings and situations in contemporary society, and the studies discussed in this volume draw on empirical data to investigate the interactional procedures used by children and young people as disputes arise in varying contexts of their everyday life. The aim of this volume is to extend current understandings of on children’s disputes by examining how, in the varying arenas and social worlds of children and young people, matters of ownership, alignment and social and moral order are always at play. Applying a sociological perspective, the research papers in this special volume show that disputes can offer analytic opportunities to examine, and make visible typically unseen social and moral orders. This consideration provides rich accounts of dispute practices within social and institutional contexts.

The Moral Economy of Everyday Crime: Markets, Consumers and Citizens

Between the crimes in the suites and the crimes in the streets lies the mostly unexplored terrain within which we find crimes of ‘everyday life’. Not all of these are formally illegal, but all are generally seen as morally dubious. Most of the crimes of everyday life are committed in the contemporary marketplace, and by those who think of themselves (and are mostly considered by others) as respectable citizens. We contextualize normative orientations that are conducive to such types of behaviour using a framework that links E. P. Thompson’s (1963) concept of the ‘moral economy’ with Institutional Anomie Theory (Messner and Rosenfeld 1994, 2007). Findings from a comparative survey study in three economic change regions (England and Wales, Western and Eastern Germany) show that a syndrome of market anomie comprising distrust, fear and cynical attitudes toward law increases the willingness of respectable citizens to engage in illegal and unfair practices in the marketplace.

Outrageous! Moral Panics in Austalia

What was Cronulla about? What really prompted 5,000 people to take the beach to bash people of 'Middle Eastern' appearance? When Macquarie Fields exploded into flames as Molotov cocktails were hurled at police, was it just a car crash that provoked the residents? Why did the Indigenous community on Palm Island react so violently to Mulrunji's death in custody? In this detailed examination of case studies, a distinguished group of experts demystifies the social processes of moral panic in Australia. Seventeen chapters explore not only the salience of the notion of moral panic in contemporary Australia, but also the relevance of moral panics in Australian history, the impact of new communication technologies and the demonisation of social categories, such as cultural minorities. Set as a text for university students, this book is a fascinating read for all those who want to go behind the hysteria, the headlines and the sound bites

They Say You are a Danger But You Are Not: Representations and Construction of the Moral Self in Narratives of 'Dangerous Individuals'

This article is based on an analysis of narratives of 26 offenders with mental health problems living in the United Kingdom. It explores the impact of an ascribed dangerous status and the construction of the self as moral and responsible in response to this label with reference to the literature on denial, deviance disavowal and other “techniques of neutralization” and Goffman's presentation of self. Two dominant strands are identified in relation to the construction of moral self-hood: “Not my fault” and “Good at heart” narratives. “Techniques of neutralization” are widely drawn on, particularly denial of responsibility in the “Not my fault” narratives that seek to explain anti-social behavior with reference to external forces such as a hostile environment inhibiting their ability to control their lives. In contrast, “Good at heart” narratives draw on the essentially good and moral nature of the inner-self. Both are used as evidence of sharing and adhering to moral norms in order to present an acceptable and credible self.

Integrity, attribution, and exploitation : contractual and normative moral rights protection in open licensing

Over the last twenty years, the use of open content licenses has become increasingly and surprisingly popular. The use of such licences challenges the traditional incentive-based model of exclusive rights under copyright. Instead of providing a means to charge for the use of particular works, what seems important is mitigating against potential personal harm to the author and, in some cases, preventing non-consensual commercial exploitation. It is interesting in this context to observe the primacy of what are essentially moral rights over the exclusionary economic rights. The core elements of common open content licences map somewhat closely to continental conceptions of the moral rights of authorship. Most obviously, almost all free software and free culture licences require attribution of authorship. More interestingly, there is a tension between social norms developed in free software communities and those that have emerged in the creative arts over integrity and commercial exploitation. For programmers interested in free software, licence terms that prohibit commercial use or modification are almost completely inconsistent with the ideological and utilitarian values that underpin the movement. For those in the creative industries, on the other hand, non-commercial terms and, to a lesser extent, terms that prohibit all but verbatim distribution continue to play an extremely important role in the sharing of copyright material. While prohibitions on commercial use often serve an economic imperative, there is also a certain personal interest for many creators in avoiding harmful exploitation of their expression – an interest that has sometimes been recognised as forming a component of the moral right of integrity. One particular continental moral right – the right of withdrawal – is present neither in Australian law or in any of the common open content licences. Despite some marked differences, both free software and free culture participants are using contractual methods to articulate the norms of permissible sharing. Legal enforcement is rare and often prohibitively expensive, and the various communities accordingly rely upon shared understandings of acceptable behaviour. The licences that are commonly used represent a formalised expression of these community norms and provide the theoretically enforceable legal baseline that lends them legitimacy. The core terms of these licences are designed primarily to alleviate risk in sharing and minimise transaction costs in sharing and using copyright expression. Importantly, however, the range of available licences reflect different optional balances in the norms of creating and sharing material. Generally, it is possible to see that, stemming particularly from the US, open content licences are fundamentally important in providing a set of normatively accepted copyright balances that reflect the interests sought to be protected through moral rights regimes. As the cost of creation, distribution, storage, and processing of expression continues to fall towards zero, there are increasing incentives to adopt open content licences to facilitate wide distribution and reuse of creative expression. Thinking of these protocols not only as reducing transaction costs but of setting normative principles of participation assists in conceptualising the role of open content licences and the continuing tensions that permeate modern copyright law.