The Role of the Family in Mediating Moral Values

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of education is to make people aware and to encourage them to freely and responsibly improve themselves. The first step of (self) shaping a person goes through the family, which has a significant role in mediating general human values, especially those of the highest natural values - morals. This work aims to examine students' perspectives on the role of the family in the transmission/mediation of moral values. The research participants are students of the first and second cycle of the Department of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Sarajevo (N=100). Analyzing their perspective and life experience, we obtained results that indicate a high degree of concordance between the framework of pedagogical understandings of morality and how moral values are transmission/mediated in their families of orientation. Also, the results show that frequent family conversations are the basis for building moral knowledge, beliefs, behavior, and actions in children and youth.