J. Russell, How Children Become Moral Selves: Building Character and Promoting Citizenship in Education

Abstract

Russell’s book is a rich source of information about children’s capacity for moral conversation. Her research was a longitudinal, micro-ethnographic study—an in-depth exploration of a single class group in an Irish primary school over a four and one half year period. The book is divided into two parts, the first is theoretical; the second marries theory with research outcomes of her method. She asserts that these two parts of the book constitute a hermeneutical circle: each informs, explains and expands upon the other; each is part of the whole text. A hermeneutical stance is central to understanding her book since she tends to be descriptive rather than prescriptive; she describes rather than argues her position. She is convinced that teachers should listen to children first of all and in teaching them how to converse among themselves, it is essential to build community so that all feel safe to say what they believe is true, care about saying it, and want to hear what others think as well. The method she employed is based on but not limited to Matthew Lipman’s approach referred to as Philosophy with Children, which she developed into a community of enquiry that allowed her to gather data about children’s growth in moral thinking and their capacity to converse about moral issues. She concludes that the children increased their competence as community of enquiry members ‘‘to engage with each other, make reasoned judgements, justify their reasons, and change stance in light of the opinion of others’’ (Russell, p. 170). In analyzing videos of moral conversation, they could recognize when speakers did not justify their reasons, got off track, did not challenge each other enough, and did not build on each other’s argument (p. 14). She observes that as time went on they became more able to discuss in depth and began to change a view without compromising unless they saw a sufficient reason for doing so (p. 14). These are significant developments for children to achieve through sustained moral conversation. The overall outcome of her research is to advocate for a child’s need to reflect on the way he or she is thinking, in community with others. She distinguishes the aims of conversation as it was experienced in community from the goals of sophistry by pointing