ABSTRACT

In the past three decades, researchers have documented young children’s moral understanding from a variety of perspectives and approaches, even though the dominant discourse of theorizing about morality shared by academics, educators, parents and practitioners may still be within a Piagetian-Kohlbergian framework. There is more evidence suggesting that children as young as two years of age begin to grasp the ideas of standards which may originate from adults’ subtle or obvious disapprovals (Kagan 1981; Dunn 2006), or derive from young children’s sensitivity to an ideal state of normality (Kagan 1984, 2013). Gopnik (2009) reveals how very young children’s behaviour can show sophisticated understandings of social rules and conventions and the feelings of others. By the age of two, a child is able to infer private feeling states of others (Zahn-Waxler et al. 1992) and act empathically towards others (Hoffman 1981). Drawing from the work of Vygotsky and Bahktin, Edmiston (2008) also documented a three-year-old child’s participation in his own moral understandings over a period of five years. Through exchanges with the child, Edmiston reveals a complex situation, indicating how the young child deeply engaged in exploring moral meaning and his own moral selves and identities.