ABSTRACT
As we have indicated on a number of occasions, our central concerns in this book are the development of children’s socio-moral awareness, and the importance of taking positive steps to foster children’s prosocial behaviour. We wish to promote ‘social behaviour’ as a topic for learning, discussion and understanding in the classroom. Although the relationship between knowledge and action is never simple and direct, nonetheless it is a basic tenet of education that by developing understanding we can influence behaviour. By focusing children’s attention on the nature and significance of their social interactions, therefore, our aim is to encourage them towards more positive social behaviour. It bears repeating that this approach involves a change of emphasis from more reactive educational strategies which focus upon the inhibition of antisocial behaviours, towards proactive support for prosocial behaviours. As some of the adult responses described in Chapter 3 have demonstrated, it is all too easy to take children’s prosocial behaviours for granted. Of course, a considerable amount of child management, both in the classroom and in the home, involves the maintenance of order, but this does not mean that prosocial child behaviours, because they are non-disruptive, can be ignored.
