The Development of Virtue in Pre-school Students
| Autor: | Yi-Ling Feng, 馮憶玲 |
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| Druh dokumentu: | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Popis: | 100 This research explores the extent to which children in the last year of kindergarten in Taiwan understand virtue, as well as the extent to which they engage in virtuous behavior. Half-structured interviews with children and their parents, supplemented with such documents as learning sheets and behavior reports, were used to analyze the participants’ understanding and behavior with respect to six widely recognized virtues—gratitude, honesty, responsibility, respect, sharing, and cooperation. The main results were as follows: I. The children’s understanding and behavior 1. The children had a basic understanding of each of the six virtues in question, but their understanding of Respect was relatively narrow and unclear. 2. The children exhibited virtuous behavior on the three levels of family, school, and community, with behavior at school receiving relatively more importance. 3. The children had a positive attitude towards virtuous behavior and recognized the cause and effect relationship between virtue and praise. 4. The children had a definite understanding of virtue, and were capable of observing and learning from the virtuous behavior of their classmates. II. Parental observation of their children’s virtuous behavior 1. The most frequently exhibited virtue was Responsibility, followed respectively by Gratitude, Cooperation, Sharing, Respect, and Honesty. 2. At home, the children mainly exhibited each of the virtues as follows: esponsibility was exhibited through taking care of themselves and picking up after themselves; Gratitude was exhibited by helping out around the house; Cooperation was exhibited through participating in group chores; Sharing was exhibited through sharing material items with others and, to a lesser extent, the sharing of emotions; Respect was exhibited through informing parents before going out and behaving courteously with older members of the family; Honesty was rarely displayed at home, though it was recognized as an ethical norm. III. Factors influencing virtuous behavior 1. The children were encouraged to engage in virtuous behavior by character education classes and the examples set by their teachers. 2. The children were encouraged to engage in virtuous behavior by a wholesome family atmosphere, i.e., the behavior, speech, and attitudes of their parents. 3. The children were encouraged to engage in virtuous behavior by the examples set by their classmates. 4. Virtuous behavior was more frequently exhibited by girls and older children. 5. Virtuous behavior was more frequently exhibited by children who had been exposed to religious teachings. IV. The effect of keeping records of children’s virtuous behavior 1. Overall, the parents were highly in favor of “virtuous conduct reports,” seeing this as an effective way of encouraging children to cultivate virtue, a wholesome character, and engage in self-reflection. 2. Due to a lack of time and an inadequate understanding of the subject, parents found it difficult to make virtuous conduct reports for their children. 3. It was also found that the children became significantly more active, positive, and thoughtful in response to the implementation of virtuous conduct reports. Finally, based on the findings, a number of suggestions are presented with respect to future research on the development of virtue in early childhood. Keywords: kindergarten, virtue, moral development, early childhood education. |
| Databáze: | Networked Digital Library of Theses & Dissertations |
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