Stories Told and Lessons Learned: Toward a Narrative Approach to Moral Development and Moral Education

Abstract

The telling of stories in moral education has a long and universal tradition. In the study of moral development, however, the uses and power of narrative in both forming and conveying a moral sense have been largely ignored. Mark Tappan and Lyn Brown argue that narrative is central to the study as well as to the teaching of morality, and that acknowledgment of authorship of moral choices, actions, and feelings marks the endpoint of the development of moral sensibility. Children's storytelling, they believe, creates authorship when the audience is responsive and the story told represents real experience. By presenting thoughtful and challenging evidence for the role of storytelling, these authors represent a perspective much needed in the field of moral development.

Clover: Connecting technology and character education using personally-constructed animated vignettes

“…Effective character education has been strongly argued and empirically shown to improve ethical thinking and social behavior among children [16,20,36].…”

“…Vignettes produce a more involved and voluntary educational process than traditional texts [39] and provide an instrument for assessing attitudes and behaviors [40]. Vignettes have been used to teach mathematics and science [9], management skills [32], problem solving [10], and character education [16,20,36].…”

“…In particular, it is needed to help address the alarming rates of bullying and peer victimization that pervade K-12 schools [3]. Our work targets kids in upper elementary and middle school (grades [5][6][7][8] because they are at the most formative years of character development [36].…”

“…An effective method for character education is the use of vignettes that express moral or social situations as narratives [20,36]. More recently, researchers have advocated the use of animated vignettes to better express the given situation [37].…”

“…By building vignettes expressing their own personal experiences, responding to other kids' vignettes, and related discussion, kids are actively engaged in reflection, role-playing, and problem solving moral and social issues [36], activities that help build character [20,21]. By using our tool to construct vignettes, kids are able to acquire and practice technology skills.…”