Children’s representations of violence: impacts of cognitive stimulation of a philosophical nature

Abstract

The ultimate goal of peace education is ‘to minimise and eventually eliminate various forms of violence through consciousness raising, vision, and action’ (Brantmeier, E. (2003) Peace Pedagogy: exposing and integrating peace education in teacher education. Paper presented at the Association for Teacher Educators meeting, p. 6). Our position is that we should invest in peace education and prevention of violence by helping preschool children develop cognitive competencies. One of the aspects of cognitive development explored in this text regards children’s social representations (SR) of violence. Indeed, a number of psychologists have demonstrated that SR serve to regulate behaviors in relation to social norms, and that a change in a person’s SR influences her or his judgments and actions. This study consists of descriptions of children’s SR of violence, verifying whether these SR are stable or dynamic at the ages of five and six years, and whether children are or are not stimulated by the Philosophy for Children approach used throughout one school year. Firstly, the results indicate that children’s SR of violence can be grouped into four hierarchical perspectives. Secondly, the results indicate that the SR of children in the control groups hardly changed during the year, whereas those of children in the experimental groups showed a more marked reorganization.

Notes

1. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada subsidized this research project from 2001 to 2005. M‐F. Daniel was head of the project, and co‐investigators included Michael Schleifer (UQAM), Catherine Garnier (UQAM), Martine Quesnel (UQAM) and Emmanuelle Auriac (IUFM of Auvergne). P‐A. Doudin and F. Pons joined the team as collaborators. Note that primary violence prevention is intended for a healthy clientele and focuses on anticipating the ill effects of violence.

2. Violence exists in every person; it is innate, natural and fundamental. Under desirable conditions, it is positive, in that it is a driving force behind love, energy and creativity; it is a tool to ensure a person’s survival. Only when violence is not integrated may it give rise to aggressiveness and abuse. Thus, fundamental violence is neither good nor bad and its evolution depends on a person’s emotional maturity modalities and on the conditions in which this person moves (Bergeret, 1999; Libersan, 2003). In this text, we focus on non‐integrated violence, which gives rise to abuse and disorders.

3. Note that these dimensions, which were implicit at first, emerged explicitly from the first data analysis.