THE RESEARCH OF CHILDREN'S SKILLS OF DIFFERING MORAL AND SOCIAL RULES ACCORDING TO SOME VARIABLES IN SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT

In this study it was investigated variables which effected moral, social and arbitrary social rule concepts of children at the school age. The dependent variable of the study was children's knowledge of moral, social and arbitrary social rules and the independent variables were age and gender. The sample of this study consisted of children at the age of 7-11 who were enrolled in private and state primary schools which were dependent on Konya Local National Education Authority. The participant childrens in this study were taken through the random sampling. From each school, 40 students from 7-8 age group, 40 students from 9-10 age group and 40 students from 11-12 age group were taken as research sample (totally 120 students). To investigate children's knowledge of moral, social and arbitrary social rules, it was used the scenarios which were developed by Buchanan-Barrow and Barrett (1998a). Variance Analysis was used to examine whether the average score of children's knowledge of moral, social and arbitrary social rules changes or not according to age group, t Test was used to examine whether it changes or not according to gender, and Tukey Test was used as post-hoc test. When examined the results of this research, it was understood that the moral rule knowledge of school age children didn't change according to age and gender, but social and arbitrary social rule knowledge differentiated.