Young children’s environmental judgement and its relationship with their understanding of the concept of living things

Abstract

Do young children think that plants deserve morally-based respect or, on the contrary, do they feel that respect for plant life is nothing more than another behavioural norm similar to, for instance, one that states that you should not pick your nose in public? This study examines how dilemmas involving environmental, moral and socio-conventional situations are comprehended in early childhood so as to investigate the issue of whether young children attach a significant degree of severity to transgressions against plant life in comparison with disregarding socially accepted rules. Additionally, young children’s judgements are put into perspective alongside their understanding of the concept of living things in order to shed light on the role that grasping essential biological notions might play in the emergence of young children’s assessments of actions that pose a threat to the environment. The sample of the study consists of 328 children (162 girls and 166 boys) who attend Early Years Education or Primary Education and the data examined comes from the individual interviews conducted with the children. The results are discussed in connection with the current understanding of the source of ethical judgements which emphasises the importance that emotions seem to play in the construction of moral thinking.

A Study on the Spontaneous Representation of Animals in Young Children’s Drawings of Plant Life

“…In contrast, there is also significant evidence that girls in early education tend to perform academically better than their male counterparts [40]. This suggests that the existence of gender gaps, as far as the understanding of biological phenomena is concerned, should not be completely ruled out, as has been stated in other significant studies [18,19,41].…”

Environmental Awareness and Its Relationship with the Concept of the Living Being: A Longitudinal Study

“…The procedure for conducting the investigation was based on a two-stage interview: a test to measure the understanding of the concept of the living being called The Living/Non-Living Distinction Test [9] and a reasoning test on environmental issues called The Environmental Judgment Test [9]. Given the longitudinal design of this research, this same procedure was carried out in two different testing sessions during a one-year period with the purpose of examining the change of the target research variables over time.…”

“…It seems, therefore, that environmental normative thinking implies a sophisticated understanding by children of what natural life is, since they give it greater importance than social rules [9,10]. However, previous research on the understanding of living things in childhood supports the idea that young children have significant limitations in classifying living things and inert entities [12,13].…”

“…However, different studies in early childhood hold that judgments about environmental behavior differ from socio-conventional dominance [8,9]. Moreover, other research asserts that due to the severity that children attach to actions that pose a threat to nature, they tend to place transgressions against the environment between moral transgressions and breaches of socio-conventional rules [10,11].…”

“…This may indicate that the unique ethical state that young children seem to attribute to plant life may initially emerge in early childhood and, more importantly, independently of their conceptual evolution in the biological domain [9].…”