Morality in Preschool Interaction: Teachers' Strategies for Working with Children's Morality

Abstract

The present study is an investigation of morality in early childhood education. The aim is to find out how values and norms for how to treat, behave, or act towards others are expressed in interaction between the child and the teacher. The main focus is on the teachers' goals, attitudes and strategies for working with values in preschool. What values do children express and how do teachers attend to these values? What values do teachers encourage children to develop? The theoretical basis for the study is the life-world. The life-world is related to a perceiving subject, a subject that experiences, lives, and acts upon the world. The life-world is lived and experienced by the subject and at the same time it is that world towards which the subject's life is directed. The results show that teachers relate morality to children's emotional and cognitive ability, to their feelings of empathy, guilt and shame as well as to children's ability to understand others' perspectives. The strategies teachers use aim to help children to understand others, to learn morally good strategies, to recompense, set limits for evil acts and avoid moral conflicts.