Exploring students’ understanding of values and moral reasoning

Abstract

This paper discusses research conducted among distance education students at the University of Pretoria in 2009. The aim of the research was to explore moral reasoning and how it may be guided or infl uenced by what students regard as important values in their lives. The paper argues that being human means having the capacity to make choices and to act in accordance with the choices made. It is argued that the choices people make are based on their own personal and socially constructed values, assumptions and beliefs. This personal set of values, assumptions and beliefs informs a person’s understanding of what is morally right and morally wrong, and of the type of conduct that would be just and ethical. Moral reasoning is therefore seen to be that which an individual regards as being morally right, based on a personal set of values. In the research, an attempt was made to determine the priority given by students to certain values and how these value orientations may infl uence their reasoning when they are confronted with a moral dilemma. The aim of the research was to explore students’ thinking and argumentation regarding moral dilemmas with a view to understanding how students – who are all practising teachers – take moral decisions. Although the study will run over a number of years, some preliminary fi ndings of a survey undertaken in June 2009 are discussed, indicating some of the initial trends emerging from the data.