The Structure of Norm-Consciousness within Primary School Children

Abstract

Based on our 6 years’ Japanese and American joint studies about primary school children’s rule-behaviors and rule-consciosness, we intended to clarify the structure of norm-consciousness within Japanese children.

We hypothesized 2 sorts of morality, aspiration (to aspire to reach at the top level) and duty (to worry about violation of the bottom standard) according to the notion of Fuller, L. L., 3 dimensions of norm or moral consciousness, feeling, recognition and anticipation for praise or punishment, about good or bad acts and high or low achievements. As independent variables which would be presumed to be correlative to the structure of norm-consciousness, we adopted 12 variables including grades, teacher’s rating of children’s behavior, degree of adjustment to school environment and some personality traits relevant to academic learning. To assess various aspects of norm-consciousness above mentioned, a questionnaire of 60 items was designed, and for 12 variables, 2 questionnaires and 2 rating methods were utilized. The subjects consisted of 819 fifth graders (423 boys, 396 girls).

The results were as follows. (1) Feeling as the index of internalized norms was unified into one structure respectively for both of aspiration and duty (not discriminated between academic and social conduct). (2) Several items which we thought at first the items of aspiration morality for academic aspect were settled into a new structure which would be considered as passive emphasis tendency on academic learning. (3) Anticipation for praise or punishment were discriminated from another aspects of norm-consciousness. (4) From analyzing of correlations between norm-consciousness structures and the correlative variables, we found the distinct sex difference. We could probably presume, the different types of morality formation process between boys and girls. (5) There was overall the dominant duty morality within Japanese primary school fifth graders.