This article contains four parts. It begins with a description of the Child Development Project, a research project aimed at discovering ways to integrate a focus on students' social and moral development in elementary schools. Then we describe the project's mixed results in helping teachers successfully apply its approach to classroom management,…

The problems examined in this study were (1) age differences in grasp of psychological causality during middle childhood, (2) the exploration of possible mediating abilities of a physical-logical nature accounting for such age differences and (3) relations between cognition of psychological causality and intentionality in moral judgment.…

Examined the influence of both peer and adult models who displayed either consistent, conflicting, or inconsistent moral judgments on the moral judgments and explanations of first graders. The influence of rationale provision was also assessed. (Author)

Preschoolers and second and fifth graders were interviewed to determine their understanding of an actor's motives and the intentionality of his act after watching films and hearing stories which portrayed an actor who intentionally or accidentally injured another for either good or bad motives. (JMB)

A diagnostic-prescriptive approach to moral education, based on the work of Piaget and Kohlberg, is presented. The approach is designed to help analyze a child's ability in a special area, compare achievement with some established list of sequenced skills, and plan lessons to help individual students attain the next higher level of accomplishment.…

The effects of rewards and expectations of future rewards on sharing were examined with 180 Israeli boys at three age levels (ages 6-7, 9-10, and 12-13). A relation between moral judgment and behavior was found. (BRT)

The act of disciplining children cannot be based upon merely "putting a stop" to negative actions by means of reactionary techniques of control. If educators begin to consider discipline as a major aspect of the educational aim of socialization of children, significant contributions toward their moral and social development will take place.…

Results showed that first-grade children were less likely to follow a task-based fair-play rule than were third graders when one of the other children was larger and older. When dealing with same-size age-mates, however, first graders were no less likely to follow a task-based rule than were third graders. (Author/CM)

Middle school students (N=25) with exceptional educational needs were matched with regular students and assessed for their level of moral reasoning using the Objective Assessment of Moral Development. Results indicate exceptional students select types of reasoning typical of younger children, and become less like their peers with age. (RC)

This paper describes the development of measures of young children's social thinking, particularly as applied to moral problems. The Kohlberg procedure of presenting problems and dilemmas to children was adopted, but the Kohlberg dilemmas were found to seem remote to children younger than 10 years of age, and incomprehensible to children younger…

Two classrooms of first graders (n-40) were administered Damon's moral judgment measure, Spivack and Shure's social problems solving measure and Stanford-Binet vocabulary. Concurrently, two observers recorded in the children's school environment incidences of successful resolutions of interactions, amount of derogation, and the number of times a…

The five observational studies reported in this paper provide consistent and interlocking testimony for the view that moral events differ qualitatively from social conventional events, and that these two aspects of the social world are associated with qualitatively differing individual-environment interactions. Each of the five studies focuses on…

Reports on experiments that examined the extent to which children's moral orientation is affected by the gender of characters experiencing a dilemma in children's literature. Children often responded to the character's dilemma by expressing a concern for others (care orientation) or focusing on issues of rights and justice (rights orientation).…

A social cognitive developmental model is presented integrating a Piagetian developmental model and Flavell's processing model, to describe three aspects of development. The utility of the model was tested in two studies. The results demonstrate that it is possible to increase children's social cognitive abilities instructionally. (Author/CTM)

The Child Development Project (CDP) was designed to enhance the development of prosocial characteristics in school children in kindergarten through sixth grade. It was developed and evaluated in a school district (San Ramon) in the San Francisco, California area. The features of the program include: (1) an instructional approach that enhances…