Belonging to and exclusion from the peer group in schools: influences on adolescents' moral choices

Abstract

This paper reports on a mixed methods study of adolescents' responses to case material about social exclusion. First, a qualitative coding method is presented that describes the way adolescents choose and justify strategies to negotiate such situations. The responses were then analysed quantitatively using chi square tests and multinomial logistic regression. Findings indicate that adolescents' interpretation of their social context was a significant factor in their choice of strategy. Those adolescents who invoked normative rules and conventions as the most salient justifications were more likely to recommend bystanding rather than joining in the exclusion. However, adolescents who viewed the protagonist's own choice as an opportunity for making long-lasting positive changes in the social environment were more likely to recommend helping the victim. Gender and school context also were associated with adolescents' choice of strategy. Implications for research in moral development as well as practical implications for school-based programming are discussed.

Moral motivation in defending classmates victimized by bullying

“…Since this complex of predictors had not yet been studied, our findings contribute to existing knowledge. Moreover, we explored a partly innovative way to assess moral motivation by using a hypothetical transgression based on a real-life story reported by Feigenberg et al (2008). Because the story describes an insider's experience with a common transgression of social exclusion of a classmate, our findings are likely to have higher ecological validity than those based on more typically used hypothetical transgressions.…”

“…In the scenario, based on the story adopted from Feigenberg et al (2008), the main protagonist (the wrongdoer)-matched to the respondent's gender-writes about his/her involvement in the exclusion of a classmate. The story starts by explaining that the wrongdoer was one of two or three people who were repeatedly excluded by a small elite group of classmates.…”

“…Innovative hypothetical transgressions that better approximate the real world, through greater complexity and more vivid detail, may extend existing knowledge. To meet these requirements, we employed a real-life story about joining the social exclusion of a classmate, originally used as a case material in a study on moral choices by Feigenberg, King, Barr, and Selman (2008). The complexity and moral relevance of social exclusion incidents have been documented previously (Killen & Rutland, 2011;Malti, Ongley, Dys, & Colasante, 2012).…”

“…While gender and peer status are proved correlates of defending (Caravita, Di Blasio, & Salmivalli, 2009;Caravita, Gini, & Pozzoli, 2012;Pöyhönen, Juvonen, & Salmivalli, 2010;Salmivalli et al, 1996), teacher support (i.e., social support provided by teacher/s) was added mainly for theoretical reasons. We assume that teacher support may encourage defending, because students' willingness to disclose bullying to teachers positively associates with teacher support (Boulton et al, 2013) and students are more likely to decide in favour of defending, when they view the environment as welcoming positive change (Feigenberg et al, 2008).…”

Through Thick and Thin

“…Let us put the methodological constraints of discussing other people's dilemmas aside for the moment, and consider the following real-life situation we have been using in our recent work [Feigenberg, King, Barr, & Selman, 2008;Selman & Feigenberg, in press].…”