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How can this framework be applied in
the classroom, to help foster social
and moral development, and to sort out
conflicts and misbehavior? Here are
three suggestions:
1) Respond to transgressions in the
appropriate domain
If a student breaks a moral rule—for
example, by hitting or insulting another
student—don’t just say, “That’s against
the rules.” It doesn’t hurt to remind
students that behaviors like these
contradict classroom or school rules
(if they do), but it’s also important to
reiterate why there are rules about these
kinds of things—namely, because they
hurt people.
On the other hand, if a student
breaks a conventional rule—such as by
speaking out of turn—don’t respond
with moral language (e.g., bad, wrong,
hurtful). Instead, emphasize norms and
classroom order by saying something
like, “Remember, we agreed to raise our
hands to keep our classroom calm and
organized.”
Studies with third- to ninth-graders
have shown that students evaluate
teachers more positively when their
responses to classroom incidents match
the domain of the transgression. In other
words, students can tell something is off
if a teacher indicates that it is morally
wrong to break a conventional norm, or
that it is wrong to hurt someone simply
because it is against the rules.
2) Integrate the different
domains into the
curriculum
Consider the subject
matter you’re teaching
through the lenses
of the different
domains. For
instance, students
in an American
history class could
be prompted to
think about an
issue like women’s
suffrage from
both a moral
point of view and
a conventional
one. You could
discuss fairness
and justice—e.g.,
whether it
is fair for
one
group of people, but not others, to have
a say in policies that affect everyone—as
well as the changing role of women
in everyday life—e.g., how suffrage
coincided with increases in women’s
economic and political power.
It may be easiest to imagine
incorporating this kind of discussion
in a subject like social studies, but
domain lenses could be applied in many
other subjects, as well, such as science
and technology, language arts, foreign
languages, or even physical education. In
sports, for example, some rules are there
to prevent harm or ensure fairness, while
others are conventional, serving to keep
games organized and keep all the players
on the same page.
In support of this approach, research
indicates that teaching with attention
to the different social domains of
academic content helps develop students’
capacities for critical moral reflection.
In one study, conducted in eighth-grade
English and American history classes,
teachers either framed everything as
moral, treated all topics as conventional,
or incorporated both perspectives as
appropriate.
When assessed later, students in the
convention group didn’t pay as much
attention to the moral implications of
situations, while those in the moral
group mostly didn’t consider the
social-conventional
ramifications—
which, in real
life, can
be very
important. Only the students in the third
group, who were guided to consider
both domains, were able to coordinate
between them in their reasoning.
3) Encourage students to really
consider each other’s perspectives
When covering a potentially
controversial topic like colonization,
nuclear power, or race in Huckleberry
Finn, for example, ask students not only
to formulate their own opinions, but also
to share with classmates and respond—
specifically and respectfully—to others’
thoughts.
Gaining a better understanding of
how others see the world and why they
make the judgments they do can help
students develop their cognitive skills,
including the ability to break arguments
into parts and to articulate why they
agree or disagree with certain parts. It
can also develop their moral insight as
they learn how different interpretations
of reality inform people’s judgments
and how circumstances affect people
different from themselves.
A recent study with middle school
social studies classrooms showed that
students who were taught how to
engage in “transactive discourse”—a
type of discussion in which students
reason about each other’s reasoning, by
(for instance) agreeing or disagreeing
with something a classmate said, then
extending or qualifying their statement—
improved their abilities to reason about
both morality and convention and to
integrate the two.
Especially now, as our world seems to
become both more connected and more
divided every day, the ability to think and
talk with others about ethical issues is
more important than ever. As educators,
it may not be our job to give students all
the answers about right and wrong. But
we can raise questions, and we can offer
tools to help students in constructing
their own answers.
OI VIETNAM
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