Development of Reading Materials for Copyright Education that Deal with Social Cases without Correct Answers

Abstract

Information morals have been taught in junior high schools as part of information and communication technology (ICT) and technology education. However, there is a lot of learning through case studies of “good” and “bad” from an ethical point of view, and the effect is not sufficient because it is difficult to be self-aware. In this study, we developed teaching materials aimed at promoting students’ self-awareness and fostering ethical values in junior high school ICT and technology education. We attempted to nurture students’ sense of ethics by developing reading materials on the theme of copyright, dealing with social cases with no clear right answer, rather than a two-way judgment of good or bad. We put one set of lessons into practice with second graders at a junior high school and evaluated the teaching materials that we developed from the perspectives of morality and ethics. As a result, when we compared their morality before and after the lessons, there were significant differences regarding the following aspects: “moral judgment” and “moral motivation” and “moral attitude.” Moreover, there was also a significant difference in “the attitude of continuing to think about a moral issue,” and it could be confirmed by improving ethics through text mining of free description.