Girl Power: Personal Moral Compass in Middle Schools in the Periphery

Authors

  • Jonathan Kasler Tel Hai College
  • Ayelet Shavit Tel Hai College
  • Nofar Michaeli Harel Tel Hai College
  • Adi Sharabi-Nov Tel Hai College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37467/gka-edurev.v1.1797

Keywords:

moral compass, values, well-being, children, gender, Palestinians, Jews

Abstract

The aim of this study was two-fold. First, we sought to map the personal moral compass (PMC) of children in the periphery – girls and boys, Palestinians and Jews - to better understand how nationality and gender affect their values – as activated in their lives. Second, we examined the relationship between personal moral compass and measures of well-being. 1001 children aged 12-13 years living in the geographic northern periphery of Israel, were asked to write short compositions on enactment of their values and complete questionnaires on their sense of hope, general belongingness, and life engagement. In choice of values, clear differences between Palestinians and Jews were revealed, but gender differences were less salient.  We also found that Palestinian and Jewish girls mentioned values more often and demonstrated deeper commitment to their PMC than boys did. Examining personal moral compass emerged as a valuable tool to learn about children’s inner world.

Author Biographies

Jonathan Kasler, Tel Hai College

Jonathan Kasler PhD lectures in the school of education Tel Hai College Israel, earned his BA at Middlesex University London UK, his M.A. at Haifa University Israel and PhD at Loughborough University UK. He served in a variety of positions at Tel Hai College Israel including head of counseling services, Head of the English Department. His research interests include: social emotional learning, minorities in education, learning disabilities, and values and spirituality in education.

Currently he is a senior lecturer in the Education school at Tel Hai College, Israel where he teaches courses in special education and minorities, emotional intelligence, inclusion and learning disabilities.

Ayelet Shavit, Tel Hai College

Professor Ayelet Shavit is a philosopher of science at Tel Hai College, Israel. She was born on Kibbutz Kfar-Gildai and received her B.A. (cum laude) and Ph.D. (summa cum laude) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ayelet examines how facts and values shape core biological concepts (e.g. ‘location’, 'cooperation' and ‘replication’) and a pro-active academia (e.g. Town Square Academia).
Ayelet publishes in journals such as Philosophy of Science, BioScience and ISIS, and her books are printed by the Magnes Press, Yale University Press (co-edited with Aaron M. Ellison) and the MIT Press (co-edited with Snait Gisis and Ehud Lamm).

Nofar Michaeli Harel, Tel Hai College

Completed her MA in social psychology at Haifa University, Israel. She earned her BA in psychology and education at Tel Hai College, Israel. She currently lectures on the psychology of Humor for a variety of organization. She is also a teaching assistant at Tel Hai College in Israel and is engaged in research in several areas, Including humor and emotion, and moral development in children.

Adi Sharabi-Nov, Tel Hai College

Ms. Adi Sharabi-Nov (MA, MPH) is a statistician and epidemiologist. She is currently the statistician for the Ziv Medical Centre, Zefat. She is a lecturer in descriptive and inferential statistics in the departments of social work and Nutrition Science, Tel Hai Academic College and also in the faculty of medicine at Bar-Ilan University, Zefat.

References

Ajdukovic, D., Kimhi, S., & Lahad, M. (Eds.). (2015). Resiliency: Enhancing coping with crisis and terrorism (Vol. 119). Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Allen, K., Kern, M. L., Vella-Brodrick, D., Hattie, J., and Waters, L. (2016). What schools need to know about fos-tering school belonging: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 1-34. doi:10.1007/s10648-016-9389-8

Anderman, L. H., & Freeman, T. M. (2004). Students’ sense of belonging in school. Advances in Motivation and Achievement, 13, 27-63.

Ayer, L., Venkatesh, B., Stewart, R., Mandel, D., Stein, B., & Schoenbaum, M. (2017). Psychological aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: A systematic review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 18(3), 322-338.

doi.org/10.1177/1524838015613774

Banyard, V., Hamby, S., Aubin, E. D. S., & Grych, J. (2015). Values narratives for personal growth formative evalua-tion of the laws of life composition program. Journal of Humanistic Psychology. doi:10.1177/0022167815618494

Brady, S. T., Reeves, S. L., Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Cook, J. E., Taborsky-Barba, S., ... Cohen, G. L. (2016). The psychology of the affirmed learner: Spontaneous self-affirmation in the face of stress. Journal of Educa-tional Psychology, 108(3), 353-373. doi:10.1037/edu0000091

Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological inter-vention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333-371. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115137

Damon, W. (2008). The path to purpose: How young people find their calling in life. New York, NY: Free Press.

Damon, W., Menon, J., & Cotton Bronk, K. (2003). The development of purpose during adolescence. Applied De-velopmental Science, 7(3), 119-128. doi.org/10.1207/S1532480XADS0703_2

Davidson, M., Lickona, T., & Khmelkov, V. (2008). Smart and good schools: A new paradigm for high school char-acter education. In L. Nucci, D. Narvaez & T. Krettenauer (Eds.), Handbook of moral and character educa-tion (pp. 370-390). New York, NY: Routledge.

Dreitzel, H. P. (Ed.) (1973). Childhood and socialization. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Efrati, N. (2004). The study of women and gender in the Middle East: The development of the discipline and its directions. In A. Banjo (Ed.), Women in the Middle East between tradition and change (p. 153-160). Tel Aviv: Moshe Dayan Center.

Elias, M. J. (2008). Laws of life: A literacy-based intervention for social-emotional and character development and resilience: conversation. Perspectives in Education, 26(1), 75-79.

Elias, M. J. (2014). The future of character education and social-emotional learning: The need for whole school and community-linked approaches. Journal of Research in Character Education, 10(1), 37-42.

Greenberg, Z. W., & Sagiv-Reiss, D. M. (2013). Young Arab women at the crossroads between the traditional and the modern: Analysis of life stories of Arab Muslim students who have left home to achieve higher educa-tion. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 4(2), 143-154. doi:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n2p143

Gross, Z. (2013). The attitudes of Israeli Arab and Jewish high school students towards extrinsic and intrinsic val-ues. Journal of Moral Education, 42(1), 88-101. doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2012.685803

Hamill, S. K. (2003). Resilience and self-efficacy: The importance of efficacy beliefs and coping mechanisms in re-silient adolescents. Colgate University Journal of the Sciences, 35(1), 115-146.

Hill, P. L., Sin, N. L., Turiano, N. A., Burrow, A. L., & Almeida, D. M. (2018). Sense of purpose moderates the associ-ations between daily stressors and daily well-being. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. doi.org/10.1093/abm/kax039

Hoffman, Y. S., Diamond, G. M., & Lipsitz, J. D. (2011). The challenge of estimating PTSD prevalence in the context of ongoing trauma: The example of Israel during the Second Intifada. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 25(6), 788-793.

Kasler, J., Shavit, A. & Harel, N. (2015). My personal moral compass. International Journal of Humanities Educa-tion, 13(1), 13-27.

Kimhi, S. (2016). Levels of resilience: Associations among individual, community, and national resilience. Journal of Health Psychology, 21(2), 164-170. doi.org/10.1177/1359105314524009

Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development: The philosophy of moral development (Vol. 1). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

Kulik, L. (2005). Predicting gender role stereotypes among adolescents in Israel: The impact of background vari-ables, personality traits, and parental factors. Journal of Youth Studies, 8(1), 111-129.

Ma, X. (2003). Sense of belonging to school: can schools make a difference? Journal of Educational Research, 96(6), 340-349.

Malone, G. P., Pillow, D. R., & Osman, A. (2012). General belongingness scale [Database record]. Retrieved from PsycTESTS. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/t37005-000

Malin, H., Liauw, I., & Damon, W. (2017). Purpose and character development in early adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 46(6), 1200-1215. doi:10.1007/s10964-017-0642-3

Marcia, J. E. (1980). Identity in adolescence. In J. Adelson (Ed.), Handbook of adolescent psychology (pp. 159–187). New York, NY: Wiley.

McKnight, P. E., & Kashdan, T. B. (2009). Purpose in life as a system that creates and sustains health and well-being: An integrative, testable theory. Review of General Psychology, 13(3), 242. doi.org/10.1037/a0017152

Miller-Graff, L. E., & Cummings, E. M. (2017). The Israeli–Palestinian conflict: Effects on youth adjustment, avail-able interventions, and future research directions. Developmental Review, 43, 1-47. doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2016.10.001

Narvaez, D., & Lapsley, D. (2014). Becoming a moral person: Moral development and moral character education as a result of social interactions In M. Christen, C. van Schaik, J. Fischer, & M. Huppenbauer (Eds.), Empir-ically informed ethics: Morality between facts and norms (pp. 227–238). Cham: Springer.

Oren, N., Nets‐Zehngut, R., & Bar‐Tal, D. (2015). Construction of the Israeli‐Jewish-speaking conflict‐supportive narrative and the struggle over its dominance. Political Psychology, 36(2), 215-230.

Osterman, K. F. (2000). Students' need for belonging in the school community. Review of Educational Re-search, 70(3), 323-367.

Saarni, C. (1999). The development of emotional competence. New York: Guilford.

Sanchez, R. (2017, July 9, 0553 GMT [1353 HKT]). Chicago's new requirement for high school students: No plan, no diploma. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/08/us/chicago-high-school-graduation-requirement/index.html

Scheier, M. F., Wrosch, C., Baum, A., Cohen, S., Martire, L. M., Matthews, K. A. . . . Zdaniuk, B. (2006). The life en-gagement test: Assessing purpose in life. Journal of Behavioral Medicine 29(3), 291-298.

Silberman, M. A., & Snarey, J. (1993). Gender differences in moral development during early adolescence: The contribution of sex-related variations in maturation. Current Psychology, 12(2), 163-171. doi:10.1007/BF02686821

Shachar-Dadon, A., Gueron-Sela, N., Weintraub, Z., Maayan-Metzger, A., & Leshem, M. (2017). Pre-conception war exposure and mother and child adjustment 4 years later. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 45(1), 131-142. doi:10.1007/s10802-016-0153-9

Snyder, C. R., Hoza, B., Pelham, W. E., Rapoff, M., Ware, L., Danovsky, M., . . . Stahl, K. J. (1997). The development and validation of the Children’s Hope Scale. Journal of Pediatric Psychology 22(3), 399–421. doi:10.1093/jpepsy/22.3.399

Snyder, F. J. (2014). Socio-emotional and character development: A theoretical orientation. Journal of Character Education, 10(2), 107-127.

Stepney, C. T., Elias, M. J., & Epstein, Y. M. (2015). What’s important to me: Identifying at-risk and resilient stu-dents through narrative writing about personal values. Journal of Research in Character Education, 11(2), 129-147.

Sumner, R., Burrow, A. L., & Hill, P. L. (2015). Identity and purpose as predictors of subjective well-being in emerging adulthood. Emerging Adulthood, 3(1), 46-54.

doi.org/10.1177/2167696814532796

Van der Graaff, J., Branje, S., De Wied, M., Hawk, S., Van Lier, P., & Meeus, W. (2014). Perspective taking and em-pathic concern in adolescence: Gender differences in developmental changes. Developmental Psychology, 50(3), 881-888. doi:10.1037/a0034325

Van Ryzin, M. J., Gravely, A. A., & Roseth, C. J. (2009). Autonomy, belongingness, and engagement in school as contributors to adolescent psychological well-being. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 38(1), 1-12. doi.org/10.1007/s10964-007-9257-4

Veljkovic, P., & Schwartz, A. (Eds.). (2001). Writing from the heart: Young people share their wisdom (Vol. 1). Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press.

Weinstock, M., Ganayiem, M., Igbaryia, R., Manago, A. M., & Greenfield, P. M. (2015). Societal change and values in Arab communities in Israel: Intergenerational and rural–urban comparisons. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 46(1), 19-38.

Downloads

Published

19-02-2019

How to Cite

Kasler, J., Shavit, A., Michaeli Harel, N., & Sharabi-Nov, A. (2019). Girl Power: Personal Moral Compass in Middle Schools in the Periphery. EDU REVIEW. International Education and Learning Review Revista Internacional De Educación Y Aprendizaje, 1(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.37467/gka-edurev.v1.1797

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2019): The International Education and Learning Review 1(1)

Section

Research articles

License

Those authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms:

  1. Authors will keep the moral right of the work and they will transfer the commercial rights.
  2. After 1 year from publication, the work shall thereafter be open access online on our website, but will retain copyright.
  3. In the event that the authors wish to assign an Creative Commons (CC) license, they may request it by writing to publishing@eagora.org