児童による登場人物の動機の把握が道徳の時間における 物語解釈に与える影響

口頭での物語伝達と話し合い活動に着目して

抄録

The present study investigates how children comprehend the stories that they hear within moral education classes by interpreting the motives of the characters. The participants were 34 sixth-graders at elementary school. A story of a man who made a second attempt at a marathon relay race was selected as the educational material,which was used in a moral education lesson to learn about his spirit from this story. During the lesson,the children discussed the story,and after the lesson,they were assigned a comprehension task that required them to write about the main characterʼs feelings and thoughts. The result of analyzing those texts indicates that interpretations of the characterʼs motives orientated comprehension of the story meaning. Interestingly,this result was observed within the context of a moral education class that includes both discussion and oral story-telling. Even though the children discussed their interpretations,they tended not to change their interpretations. Taking into account the robustness of such motive interpretations,educators need to support children in firmly focusing on character motive during the early lesson stages. These findings hint at one possible reason for why children can hold a wide variety of perspectives for the same story.