Changes in children’s reasoning about the social inclusion of aggressive children over the early years of elementary school

ABSTRACT

While there is growing understanding about children’s moral reasoning for social inclusion and exclusion, we know little about how children reason specifically about the inclusion of aggressive children in school settings. To investigate children’s decisions about such inclusion and how they justified those decisions, this study reports data from 172 children interviewed in Year 1 (female = 85, male = 87), between the ages of six and seven and 155 children (female = 78, male = 79) who were interviewed again in Year 2. The children’s responses to scenarios regarding inclusion or exclusion of an aggressive child (who is bossy and pushes others around) in their play at school demonstrated that they were more likely to include an aggressive child in their play in Year 2 than in Year 1 of elementary school. They were also more likely in Year 2 to provide justifications that demonstrated a deeper understanding of the reasons for children’s aggressive behaviour at school. These data suggest that children’s school experiences may contribute to their ability to access multiple perspectives when reasoning about inclusion of others. Findings suggest the need to consider more closely how contextual experiences influence young children’s moral reasoning.

KEYWORDS:

• Moral reasoning
• social cognition
• inclusion
• early childhood
• social domain theory
• interpersonal traits
• aggression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Laura Scholes is an Australian Research Council Research Fellow in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education at QUT. Her research interests include the development of children’s moral reasoning, boys and education, early childhood development and inclusive education. She is currently lead investigator on an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award Project.

Jo Lunn Brownlee is Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education at QUT. Over the last decade, she has researched extensively in the field of personal epistemology (beliefs we hold about knowledge and knowing) in teaching and teacher education, with a particular focus on early years teacher education. She has been lead chief investigator on three Australian Research Council Discovery grants since 2006 which collectively investigated how early years professionals’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing influence their interactions with young children.

Susan Walker is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education at QUT and a key researcher in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Her research interests include epistemic beliefs and teachers’ practice; early childhood social development; child outcomes in relation to inclusive early childhood education programmes; early intervention and the transition to school.

Eva Johansson is Professor of Education, at the Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Stavanger, Norway. She is an experienced researcher in the field of early childhood education with an extensive research and publication profile in the area of values education, issues of democracy and children’s morality.

ORCID

Laura Scholes http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8849-2825

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council 2013–2015 [DP130102136].