26_GordonSmith

The morality of young children in their early years setting Pat Gordon-Smith

[email protected]

Key words: behaviour; competence; early years; morality; young children.

Introduction One afternoon, when my son, Daniel, had just turned 3, we paid a rare visit to a local

playgroup. Being a relative stranger to the place, Daniel chose to play by himself with the

wheeled toys but soon ran into a large plastic Wendy House from which he reappeared

almost immediately, followed by a little girl he did not know. They were both giggling. For a

couple of minutes, they played a chaotic game of tag around the house and then Daniel

ran to me and said, “She’s my friend!” The game carried on for a few minutes more, during

which time the children made several gleeful declarations of friendship. And then, just as

suddenly as their play had started, it stopped. The two paid no attention to each other for

the next 10 minutes and I assumed that their collaboration was over. But then a little boy

snatched the policeman’s hat from Daniel’s head, and Daniel burst into tears. Almost

immediately, Daniel’s new friend ran across the play area, pushed over the little boy and

grabbed the hat, shouting, “No! That’s my friend’s hat!” She walked calmly to Daniel, gave

him his hat, smiled, and went back to what she had been doing. They did not play with

each other again.

I had already begun to think about young children’s morality at the time of this event, so

was more than a little intrigued by it. The girl’s behaviour seemed to combine two opposing

moral actions – one an unkind act of pushing which could have caused hurt, the other an

act which protected her new friend’s interests. It highlighted the seeming moral

contradictions in young children’s behaviour and generated the idea for an MA research

project through which to understand them.

The research aimed to identify a framework for morality that might recognise the

positive contribution of such paradoxical behaviour to children’s moral development, and to

analyse their moral actions and ideas according to that framework and the discourse

through which it emerged. Influenced by ideas about children’s competence in the

sociology of childhood, the research was informed by the principle that children ‘are and

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must be seen as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives’

(Prout and James, 1997: 8) and evidence from research that even the very youngest

children find ways to manipulate their environment (Alderson et al, 2005) and that pre-

schoolers have their own ways of dealing with conflict beyond adult influence (Danby and

Baker, 1998).

This article looks briefly at the link between theories of moral development and ideas

about children’s social competence before focusing on the research carried out in a

nursery school during the spring of 2007. It centres on the actions and ideas of five

children aged between 3 and 4 and considers the effect of adult ideas on their real and

perceived status as moral agents. Are the adults’ views directed by children’s compliance

with or deviance from adult rules (Waksler, 1991), or is there respect for young children’s

different moral behaviour, born of an appreciation that children have a different

understanding which develops over time (Matthews, 1987)? By focusing on one child in

particular, the article reveals the interplay between adult practitioners’ respect for the

children’s self-directed learning and their impulse to intervene in social behaviour. This has

some implications for practice.

Two frameworks of morality

Through history, western philosophers have argued about whether morality derives from

human nature or human logic (MacIntyre, 1967) and the position taken on this has an

effect on whether or not young children can be regarded as moral agents. This ongoing

dispute was important for the nursery-school study as both the context for the research

and its conduct were influenced by two opposing yet complementary frameworks of

morality, and data gathered in the course of research was analysed in relation to them.

Referred to here as the ‘justice’ and the ‘caring’ frameworks – terms taken from Gilligan

and Wiggins (1987) – the former sees rationality as a necessary condition for positive

moral agency, while the latter conceives morality as an expression of human relationships.

The justice framework

According to the developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1969), morality is driven

by human logic. Kohlberg drew on Kant’s view that the moral principles of justice, honesty

and respect can only be understood and acted upon through mature reasoning (Gert,

2008). In trying to understand how children become ‘rational’ (adult) moral agents, he

developed a theory identifying six linear stages in the development of moral understanding

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that were linked to biologically predetermined stages in cognitive development. That first

stage towards rational morality began around the age of 10 and reached the ultimate sixth

stage in adults capable of acting according to universal moral principles even in the face of

social and cultural disapproval or against emotional attachments.

Kohlberg’s theory extended Piaget’s (1965 [1932]) earlier work on moral understanding

and, despite a difference in approach, both men concluded that cognitive development in

young children was too primitive for even simple rational morality. They judged young

children to be incapable of moral understanding beyond Kohlberg’s first stage, in which

moral behaviour is merely copied from that observed in adults to invite praise and avoid

anger, and is certainly not moral agency. In this influential paradigm, early childhood

attachments are ultimately irrelevant because the pinnacle of rational morality pays no

heed to anything that might divert attention from the universal moral truths. Relationships

must necessarily be discarded on the way towards a detached, impartial morality based on

equality and fairness.

Given that young children do not figure in the stages of morality conceived by Kohlberg

and Piaget, the justice framework may seem irrelevant to a study of moral understanding

among 3 and 4 year olds. But it cannot be overlooked because the staged model has had

such a significant impact on society’s concept of childhood. Mayall (2004: 39 & 40)

characterises this “set of outdated beliefs about children” as one that restricts children’s

potential for exercising their social competence and she decries the fact that it continues to

“structure policies and practice in the UK” so that the notion of children as “incompetent

vulnerable beings who progress with adult help through the stages needed to turn them

into mature adults” has been relied upon by “government ministers, civil servants, local

authority staff, social services and education staff”. Early childhood education did not

escape this influence, although the UK government’s guidance for the Foundation Stage

for children aged 3 to 5 in England formally challenged the idea of predictable stages in

development, referring instead to “children learning in different ways and at different rates”

(QCA/DfEE 2000: 21).

Even so, the staged model of development runs deep: the government’s assertion that

children learn in different ways still refers to ‘stages’ and gives a conditional example of

what they might do when they are ‘older’. In determining the nursery school’s impact on

children’s moral understanding, it was instructive to establish whether the nursery staff had

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any age- and/or stage-related views about children’s moral development and

understanding.

The caring framework

The justice framework of morality has been criticised for failing to engage with moral

commitment and, despite its interest in human interaction, for not actually considering

relationships (Burman, 1994). Carol Gilligan challenged the exclusive focus on logic as the

motivation for engaging in moral actions (Gilligan and Wiggins, 1987). Interpreting rational

morality as a form of blind justice most usually understood and exercised by men, she

suggested that a complementary moral framework springs from the kind of caring

relationships most generally identified in the bond between parents and children, and more

frequently expressed by women. In direct opposition to the detachment required by

Kantian ethics, morality in this framework of care relies on strong attachment relationships,

the experience of which generates an ability to understand and respond to the feelings of

others. “In the context of attachment,” say Gilligan and Wiggins (1987: 280), “the child

discovers the patterns of human interaction and observes the ways in which people care

for and hurt one another.”

Gilligan and Wiggins explain that, in the justice framework, moral development is

defined by progress from a position of unequal power in adult–child relationships to one of

equality and independence. It is an understanding of morality based on equal justice which

creates a moral injunction on individuals and groups not to treat others unfairly. But,

echoing Kant’s contemporary David Hume (2000 [1740]), who insisted that “morality … is

more properly felt than judged of”, Gilligan and Wiggins (1987: 281) explain how a focus

on the experience of attachment moves the discourse about morality away from objective

judgements about power relations and equality, and “generates a perspective on

relationships that underlies the conception of morality as love”. This opens the door for

young children’s feelings and relationships – their attachments – to be morally important,

and for the actions which spring from their emotional experience to be recognised as

evidence of their social and moral competence. From this perspective, morality is not so

much the basis for an impartial code of conduct but is instead the expression of those

connections which form the bedrock of all human relations and create in children an

awareness that they are capable of having an effect on others. This idea is supported by

early years’ experts who say that young children exhibit their understanding of feelings in

their behaviour towards others (Bayley 2006; Cousins 1999; Dowling 2005) and that they

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learn best in familiar social contexts (Donaldson (2006 [1978]); Dowling 2005; Hurst and

Joseph 1998).

In work which complements that of Gilligan, Kagan (1984) suggests that emotion is the

conduit through which children display their understanding of the difference between right

and wrong. Like Gilligan and Wiggins, he suggests that there may be two moral processes

– one based on feelings; the other on logical consistency with a few deep premises. This

leads him to argue that moral behaviour based on impulsive sentiment is just as much the

act of a moral agent as behaviour based on rational consideration for, in his view, human

adults and children prefer to avoid inconsistency between [rational] belief and [impulsive]

action. So Kagan opens another door, one that enables young children’s impulsive

behaviour to be analysed for evidence of their competence as moral agents.

Gilligan and Wiggins are most interested in arguing the case for caring attachment as a

framework for human morality while Kagan focuses on the importance of emotion, but they

each acknowledge the influence of a Kantian framework based on detached justice. So,

while emotion and care offer the keys for enabling children to be moral agents – making

them vital for the analysis of children’s morality in a nursery school – it was also important

for the nursery-school study to consider the children’s potential for moral agency with

regard to issues of justice.

The nursery-school context

For a study interested in children’s moral competency, it was important to work in an

environment where children might be free to display it. An early years setting was chosen

because the principles of good early education, upheld by the UK government (QCA/DfEE,

2000), say that young children shape their learning through experiences which are

planned according to their own interests. Where children are acknowledged as active in

their own learning it is likely that adults will believe in their competence – or at least in their

potential to be competent.

The writing about children’s moral development points to the vital importance of social

context for promoting children’s moral understanding. The quality of social interaction is

conceived as key to moral development (Kagan, 1984; Matthews, 1987), whether at home

(Dunn, 1987) or at school (Donaldson, 2006 [1978]), while moral learning is said to occur

among peers as they play (Dunn 1987; Gilligan and Wiggins 1987) and is also facilitated

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by adults (Crawford, 2001; Dunn, 1987). There is a long nursery-school tradition of

promoting children’s learning through social play rather than formal tuition (Bruce, 2004),

and this pointed to a state-funded nursery school as a suitable context for research.

According to Broadhead (2004: 27), “sociability and cooperation” are facilitated for

children in a setting that has “free-flow areas, where the children can select”, and she

agrees with Fisher (2002) that the environment must be richly resourced so that children

may engage, together, in activities which interest them. By planning for learning in

response to children’s interests rather than to achieve abstract targets, adults foster the

children’s self-respect and this contributes to their respect for others (Hurst and Joseph,

1998). This careful management of the children’s self-directed learning actually cultivates

their dependence on other people in the setting (Crawford, 2001) and helps to build the

emotional connections that are essential to social and moral development (Cousins, 1999;

Kagan, 1984; Gilligan and Wiggins, 1987). Recommendations from a national early

childhood organisation suggested that ‘Willow’ Nursery School in south London embodied

these principles, and so was chosen as the context for research.

Willow is set in the heart of a deprived housing estate, drawing its 77 children from the

estate and also from local middle-class housing. The building has three classrooms

separated by open arches and divided into areas using tables and low shelving. Most of

these areas are set up to provide the children with daily activities, many of which extend

the interests they have displayed on the previous day. The remaining areas are richly

stocked with resources which the children can access during free play. The small outdoor

area has lots of interest, with static and movable climbing frames, wheeled toys, a pond, a

wild area and a wealth of hands-on resources. The children have free rein over their

choice of location, activity and companions, indoors and out, for almost the entire 2½-hour

session. The staff work as a team and any practitioner will play or work with any child or

group of children, although each child has a ‘keyworker’ with whom they might form a

special relationship.

All participants were invited to opt in to the research. Parents gave consent to their

children’s involvement but the children’s informed consent was directly sought during the

research (Alderson and Morrow, 2004), although it was not eventually achieved.

Observation and conversation with children is at the heart of good early years practice

(QCA/DfEE, 2000); they are the primary tools used by early childhood educators to reflect

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on the children’s interests, direction and needs. The children at ‘Willow’ were so familiar

with being observed and being engaged in conversation that, in a short research period, it

proved impossible to enable them to perceive the need for consent. Eventually, consent

was inferred through the children’s level of interest and cooperation with the research.

Further research in this area would be helpful.

Following parental consent and a period assessing the children’s consent, five children

from mixed social and ethnic backgrounds were involved in the research. There were two

boys and three girls who spanned the nursery’s 3 to 4½ age range, with commensurate

experience of the setting. The study was carried out over eleven morning sessions across

four weeks, with nine of the visits spent in the children’s environment. Research with the

children was designed to invite their free expression of ideas. Initial observation ranged

from half-hidden watching to playing with the children at their chosen activities and

informal conversations. Two self-chosen play sessions followed, aimed at discovering the

children’s ideas about emotions and moral behaviour.

• Conversation with Tara/Play with trains. Dolls or toys can become characters with a

tale to tell. They have been shown to engage young children in conversation about

their emotions (Bayley, 2006; Dowling, 2005) and are recommended as tools for

encouraging young children’s participation (Miller, 2003). The children were each

offered a chance to either talk to a soft doll ‘Tara’ – a ‘little girl’ who had moved to

London from the country and had no friends – or to play out scenarios with

characters from the Thomas the Tank Engine stories. Both activities covered topics

that had been noted during observations. Participating children were invited to

attend by themselves or with a friend. Sessions were recorded, with the children’s

permission. Transcriptions were analysed for ideas that might fall into the justice or

caring frameworks for morality, those which threw light on relationships between

children and with adults, or which provided commentary on children’s experience in

the environment.

• Exploring feelings with picture collages. Clark and Moss (2001) advocate the use of

visual media with which to enable pre-literate children to express themselves.

Multiple copies of colourful images from story books – chosen for their potential to

encourage thinking about feelings and motives – were laid on a table in one of the

open ‘classrooms’. Children were invited to make a collage by sticking images on a

piece of paper and to talk about their choices. They were given coloured stickers

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with faces drawn on them (green smiley, red sad, yellow neutral) and asked to

choose the one that would best describe the feelings of characters in each collage

image. The children’s collages and their responses were useful for gauging

children’s knowledge and understanding of feelings – both their own and those of

other people. The activity was open to all children at the nursery.

Research with adults involved formal interviews and informal conversations with the

headteacher, deputy head, and participating children’s keyworkers and parents. Interviews

with parents delved into the moral values held at home and provided insight into the

children’s moral behaviour and understanding in their most familiar environment.

Moral behaviour at Willow Nursery School Mornings at ‘Willow’ were busy. When the children arrived, they settled almost immediately

to the activity of their choosing, sometimes alone but generally in the company of others.

Children were not directed towards specific activities or companions unless they requested

it, and this principle was applied for most of the morning, interrupted by occasional group

or individual sessions offering special help or encouraging particular skills. The freedom of

this environment made it rich for research into morality – that is, for a study into the effect

that individuals have on each other and the extent to which they understand and/or are in

control of their impact.

The period available for research was relatively short so it was not possible to make an

in-depth study of the recurring elements in children’s moral interactions or to observe how

individual or group behaviour changed over time. However, there were clear moral themes

to be seen in the children’s behaviour, examples of which can be interpreted broadly within

the two moral frameworks identified earlier.

Morality of justice

According to Gilligan and Wiggins (1987), the justice framework creates a moral injunction

that individuals should not treat others unfairly. Children test this injunction to discover how

far justice can afford protection to the unequal, and might do so with the words, ‘It’s not

fair’. I did not hear children use these words at ‘Willow’, but there were certainly ‘tests’ of

the justice framework which involved questions of ownership, sharing and turn-taking. For

most of the morning session, all resources were available for any of the children to use

whenever they wished and so personal access to them was a matter for constant

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negotiation. ‘Ownership’ was generally established by children already occupying a space

or playing with a toy. So, when two children tried to take the toy buggies away from one

participant child and her friend, the ‘owners’ merely stood their ground and the others soon

retreated.

In most cases, the fluidity of play caused resources or areas to be left behind and so

available to others. When this did not occur, some cooperation was required to ensure the

children’s equal access to those resources and their equality as peers. Staff spoke of the

children’s difficulty with sharing resources and how much of their time was spent planning

for and managing turn-taking. But I observed several occasions where children engaged

spontaneously in sharing, for example when three boys discovered that it was better to

take turns putting cars down a tube than to continue jamming them down at the same time.

Such happy cooperation did not always occur, however. When a participant 3-year-old

with advanced language skills was joined on the plastic cube outside by two others who

had limited language, they appeared to be enjoying shared play as they followed each

other in a serpentine motion through the holes in the equipment. Closer observation

revealed that the first child was not taking turns; she was hanging on to ownership of the

cube. By maintaining her position and ignoring the non-verbal signs of annoyance made

by the others, she eventually saw them off in an apparent failure of the justice framework

to protect individuals from unfair treatment.

Morality of caring

According to Gilligan and Wiggins (1987), the caring framework for morality implies a

different injunction from the justice framework: that individuals should not turn away from

someone in need. Just as children test the power of justice to protect them from inequality,

they test the power of caring to protect them from abandonment, perhaps by saying, ‘I

don’t love you’.

At Willow, two older girls frequently tested the strength of their attachment to each

other. In the course of three separate disagreements I heard one tell the other, ‘You’re not

my friend’. Staff confirmed that it was a habitual practice and that they repeatedly talked to

the girls about how it wasn’t kind. It is possible that these pronouncements had caused

distress in the past, but neither girl was observed to be much concerned and their play

resumed within minutes or, on one occasion, continued seamlessly. Dunn and Cutting’s

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(1999) observations about friendship pairs in a nursery school suggest that this

relationship was a forum for the girls’ experience of emotions, contributing to their learning

within the caring framework for morality (Gilligan and Wiggins, 1987; Kagan, 1984).

The effectiveness of care was also tested by watchfulness, a characteristic of moral

learning identified by Dunn (1987). Several children were marching around the circular

bench outside when one child accidentally knocked another to the ground and the fallen

boy started to cry. A practitioner ran to him, sat where he lay and comforted him there. For

a few moments, all the children on the bench stood transfixed, watching the crying boy and

the comforting adult before setting off again as the cries subsided.

Adult policies and practices The role of education in young children’s moral development is embedded in early years

pedagogy, with policies and practices designed to foster children’s moral development.

This has now been written into the early years curriculum. In the Foundation Stage that

was in place at the time of the research, children aged 3 to 5 moved along ‘stepping

stones’ towards ‘early learning goals’ which they might reach by the end of reception.

Several stepping stones have moral content, such as the ability to work harmoniously as

part of a group and to form good relationships, while one of the goals is to ‘understand

what is right, what is wrong and why’ (QCA/DfEE, 2000: 34–42). One of the cornerstones

of the Foundation Stage is that it has a ‘principled approach’ to early education, and two of

these central principles have clear moral implications. One states that “no child should be

excluded or disadvantaged because of ethnicity, culture or religion, home language, family

background, learning difficulties or disabilities, gender or ability’” and the other says that

“practitioners should ensure that all children feel included, secure and valued” (QCA/DfEE,

2000: 11). Both are to be applied universally and, as such, promote a justice-based

morality, although the nurturing of individual self-esteem implied in the second principle

suggests that value is also placed on the morality of care. It is significant that in these and

all the remaining principles, the responsibility for children’s learning is placed squarely on

the shoulders of practitioners and – despite the curriculum’s interest in children’s self-

directed learning – is not shared by children.

An alternative, complementary approach to the Foundation Stage is found in the Quality

in diversity framework (ECEF, 2003). Without government backing, it cannot influence

early years practice as widely as the Foundation Stage, but its approach is regarded by

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many experts as crucial for children’s meaningful learning (Beels, 2007). The Quality in

diversity goals for early learning include several with moral content, for example that

children are “forming mutually respectful relationships” and “learning to understand and

reflect on the effect of their choices and decisions on others”. These goals are not so much

targets for behaviour as statements of respect for the many ways in which young children

learn. As such, they share the responsibility for learning between practitioners and children

and so are distinct from the focus on practitioner responsibility in the Foundation Stage.

Ideas about morality and moral development

Observation established that ‘Willow’ Nursery School enables varied and significant social

interactions and moral behaviours among the children. The environment is also imbued

with strong moral principles, where certain kinds of moral behaviour and understanding are

promoted. Investigation into the staff’s personal beliefs about morality and moral

development revealed the underlying moral principles at work in the setting. This enabled

analysis of how these principles guide the policies and practices towards children’s moral

learning and colour the staff’s view of the children’s potential to develop competence

through experience.

Questions to ‘Willow’ staff about what they understood by the term ‘morality’ revealed

an inclination towards principles of justice. The deputy head, who was responsible for

writing the nursery’s Positive Behaviour Policy, defined morality as respect for other

people and for their beliefs. ‘What’s central to morality,’ she said, ‘is the idea that you

would want everyone to feel OK, and anything that hurts that feeling must be wrong.’

Keyworker R echoed the deputy’s views, saying that morality is ‘respect for other people

and who they are’. Another keyworker (Danielle, who features later in this article) was the

only research participant who linked morality to belief in God. She said that ‘if children

were told about a higher authority and a higher morality, they would know that doing good

is not just about pleasing parents’. Her views reveal an adherence to the idea that ‘doing

good’ for children is an act of Piagetian egocentrism.

The existence of a Piagetian strand of thinking was confirmed by the head, who

specifically referred to very young children as ‘egocentric’. Keyworker A said that ‘children

are by nature quite selfish … and they have to learn to be unselfish’. But this seemed to

contradict her view that it is the experience of care and feelings not an understanding of

rules, which leads young children towards moral behaviour: ‘I think only by understanding

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other people’s feelings – other children’s feelings – can they understand what they feel

themselves and be able to project what they would have felt on to the other child.’ In these

two sentences lies a tension between the belief that children need direct adult instruction

in order to learn and the belief that they learn through experience – whether or not it is

enabled by adults.

Learning through Instruction and experience

‘Willow’s’ Positive Behaviour Policy states that practitioners should have “an underlying

belief that all [children] can behave appropriately given the right support”. Staff placed a

high value on the effectiveness of their talking to the children about their actions as the

‘right support’ required for resolving disputes. Keyworker A said that it ‘might take a lot of

an adult talking and maybe pointing out how the other person’s feeling for them to

understand what their action is doing to the other person’, while Danielle said, ‘When

they’ve done something good, you can give them praise and tell them, “Can you see how

happy you’ve made them”?’ On the face of it, these practices reflect Dowling’s (2005) view

about the importance of discussion for children’s learning. But both practitioners focus

exclusively on what they say as being central to the children’s learning about morality,

while Dowling says that children’s active learning is not dependent on what others tell

them; that they bring their own ideas to situations.

Interestingly, Dowling’s approach to active learning was celebrated by staff in other

aspects of their provision. Practitioners stood back as children jumped until they were

soaked through in a massive puddle which had appeared overnight. They made no

attempt to instruct children how to experience the puddle (some splashed, some found

things to float, some avoided it altogether), nor did they tell the children what they were

learning in the water. Yet the same practitioners felt it important to tell children about kind

and unkind actions towards each other. They focused on their responsibility towards the

children’s learning rather than on the children’s contributions and this seemed to generate

a negative appreciation of the children’s moral actions. Adults were most likely to describe

children as innately ‘selfish’ when they talked about their own approaches to managing

children’s apparently unjust or uncaring behaviour. For example, the head’s comment

about young children’s egocentricity came during a conversation about how staff were

‘teaching’ the children about ‘sharing’ by using stickers to show how many turns they had

taken on the popular bikes. The approach overlooks Miller’s (2003: 34) observation that

‘children find turn-taking much easier if they have some control over the process’.

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Another kind of ‘telling’ the children about morality included the informal pronouncement

of ‘rules’ about behaviour. This was most frequently observed when the children were

gathered into groups at the end of the morning to listen to a story, sing songs or have a

chat. It was the only daily adult-led session in which all the children participated.

Observation revealed that this was consistently the time when children were ‘told’ what to

do, where contributions that did not fit practitioners’ plans were deflected and where

negative moral judgements were made about behaviour which might have been

acceptable or even encouraged in free-play sessions. This is drawn out below in a case

study featuring ‘Afolabe’.

The staff’s impulse to instruct did not preclude the children from forging their own moral

learning and it is important to note that the environment which gave the children so many

opportunities for self-generated moral behaviour was actively afforded by the adult staff.

The deputy talked about giving children the tools to manage conflict by, for example,

showing them how to say, ‘It’s not alright to do that to me.’ Informally, practitioners had a

phrase – ‘use your words!’ – which invited the children to tell others what they wanted or

why they were unhappy. While the practitioners’ discussion still focused on what they did

to empower the children, observations revealed that this phrase was a signal to children

who appealed for adult help that they were in charge of the resolution.

Of course, one might suggest that, simply by saying ‘use your words’, practitioners were

not so much trusting the children to make their own resolutions as giving them permission

to do so. Certainly, keyworker A said that, if a child was being excluded, she would

intervene ‘if the child hasn’t got enough language or communication enough to be able to

break into the group’, suggesting that very young children or those with language

difficulties are not thought capable of conflict resolution and therefore not given

‘permission’ to act. But this should not negate the staff’s willingness to encourage

children’s self-directed moral learning. On each of the occasions when I heard the phrase

‘use your words’, the practitioner involved left the scene immediately and the children were

left to their own devices. Furthermore, the head said that she did not see the benefit of

insisting that children say sorry. Instead, as McTavish (2007) suggests, children may find

other ways to acknowledge that a hurt has happened, and not always with the help of a

practitioner. Both approaches showed respect for children’s ability to act competently.

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The Positive Behaviour Policy

The Foundation Stage focus on practitioner responsibility for children’s learning is reflected

in Willow’s Positive Behaviour Policy (PBP), which places emphasis on how adults should

approach children and their behaviour: ‘Staff will use active listening techniques, remaining

open, approachable and accessible. The tone of voice should convey understanding and

acceptance. Children are given “time, love, acceptance, respect and encouragement to

express themselves.” The children’s input and the role of their experiences appear only in

relation to the staff’s duty to give children the freedom “to experiment and make mistakes”.

Again, a permission to act, and one which anticipates the children’s errors. To be truly

enabling, it might simply have said ‘children have freedom to experiment’.

The PBP maintains practitioners’ control over their approach to children who

themselves remain passive, so that “the child’s feelings are acknowledged as valid” and “a

child may be encouraged to express their anger in an appropriate way such as tearing up

paper” [my italics]. How different might the approach be if the policy stated that ‘children’s

feelings are valid’ or that ‘children can express their anger in many appropriate ways’? The

implications for how the moral framework at Willow affects on the children’s own

development and competence is investigated through a case study focusing on ‘Afolabe’ –

a black Eritrean boy aged 3 years and 5 months who had been at Willow for just six

weeks. (All names featured in this example are fictitious.)

The Two Afolabes

Although he was new to the setting, Afolabe seemed quite at ease. He played impulsively

and happily with a relatively large selection of boys and his limited grasp of language

seemed no barrier to forming relationships. The relationship between Afolabe and his

keyworker, Danielle, was already quite warm at the beginning of the research and had

grown significantly four weeks later. Despite this, Afolabe’s behaviour noticeably breached

Danielle’s expectations and those of other adults during adult-led activities. A pattern soon

emerged in his behaviour and the way in which it was perceived by adults. When left to his

own devices – to play as he wished and with whom he chose – Afolabe frequently acted

according to a generosity of spirit that enabled long periods of play despite a strong

tendency to insist on ownership of certain toys. But while his generosity was still evident in

adult-led situations, it was often misinterpreted by adults or perceived as disruptive rather

than caring. This effect was seen across two observations.

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One morning, I observed Afolabe playing at a large water container in the company of

three boys, two of whom were his frequent companions. Early in the observation, a little

girl came and stood next to Afolabe. She looked under 2 years and was probably the sister

of a child attending Willow. Her mother stood nearby, talking to a practitioner who was

loosely supervising the water play. Neither adult saw the girl scoop up some bubbles and

put them repeatedly into her mouth – but Afolabe saw and he stopped to watch. First of all

he just grinned but, as she continued, he turned and said to the adults standing behind

him, ‘Look, he’s eating it.’ They didn’t hear, and the girl continued to feed herself bubbles

while Afolabe grinned and, every so often, pulled her hand away from her mouth. The girl’s

mother eventually took her daughter away, apparently unaware that anything had

happened.

Soon after, one of Afolabe’s friends arrived at the water tray. ‘Hello, Kyle!,’ Afolabe

welcomed him brightly. At almost the same moment, the supervising practitioner noticed

another boy crying nearby and said to him, ‘You know what Afolabe is doing? He put a car

in the water!’ In response, Afolabe turned his attention from Kyle and towards the crying

boy, who was not one of his special friends. ‘Hello!’ he said, just as brightly and with equal

welcome as he had done for Kyle.

The interaction which prompted Afolabe’s moral acts was not linked to his play

alongside the boys already at the water tray. Instead, it involved children coming into the

context and suggests the importance of a free-flow environment for encouraging the kind

of diverse interaction which makes moral behaviour possible – in Afolabe’s case, the

willingness to take action on behalf of others. By noticing the girl as she put bubbles in her

mouth, and pointing it out to the adults, Afolabe demonstrated how young children pay

attention when something does not fit the norm and which is an important step in the

development of moral understanding (Kagan, 1984). Having failed to gain the adults’

attention Afolabe went further and tried to prevent the girl from putting more bubbles in her

mouth. It was a competent moral act, with no input from adults.

Later on, the likelihood that Afolabe would welcome a child who is not his special friend

was predicted by the practitioner who, out of all the children collected around the water

tray, chose Afolabe as the figure who might encourage the crying child to come and play.

This compares significantly with what happened just a few moments later. Having fully

investigated the water as individuals, Afolabe and his friend Clayton began interacting

15

more fully, taking it in turns to splash each other’s face, both encouraged by the other’s

grinning. The same practitioner did not notice at first, but when she did it was at a point

when Afolabe had just splashed Clayton. She immediately told him to stop, saying that he

was making the area wet and was being unkind to Clayton – a comment which identified

his play as morally questionable, although it was almost certainly driven by an unspoken

adult rule about not making too much mess indoors; there was no such direction to stop

splashing when the children were playing in the big puddle outside. The practitioner spoke

gently to Afolabe, with the acceptance required by the school’s Positive Behaviour Policy

(PBP), but her statement demonstrates how the children’s moral behaviour was called into

question when practitioners felt the need to ‘manage’ a situation. This was demonstrated

even more clearly in a group session run by Danielle and an observation which started

with another expression of generosity from Afolabe.

The children had just sat down in a circle on the carpet when boy Emmanuel arrived to

join in. He stood uncertainly at the edge of the group for a few minutes before Danielle

suggested that he sit next to Afolabe, and he quickly did so. Unnoticed by Danielle, who

was now talking to the whole group, Afolabe turned to Emmanuel, touched his arm and

fixed him with a momentary gaze of extraordinary gentleness which, to my eyes, said,

‘You’re OK with me’. As with the little girl and the bubbles, this action had no obvious

benefit to Afolabe – he and Emmanuel did not emerge as particular friends – and had not

been generated by adults. Immediately afterwards, Danielle began to direct the progress

of storytime so that Afolabe was no longer able to choose how to act. A ‘Hello’ song was

sung to each child in turn, starting with a child of Danielle’s choosing and moving in a

clockwise direction. Every time the song moved to a new child, Afolabe shouted excitedly

that they should sing to Clayton next, although Clayton was seated in the position which

meant he would be sung to last. Danielle let it pass a couple of times and then said, ‘You

want to sing about Clayton, don’t you Afolabe, because Clayton is your friend. But it’s

Lara’s turn now.’ Almost immediately, Afolabe broke out of the circle, crawled over the

other children and began to squirm about on the sofa nearby. He continued to do so for

some minutes, despite repeated requests from Danielle that he should stop, and only

came back to the circle when another practitioner collected him and sat down with him.

While Afolabe’s enthusiasm to involve Clayton might have been welcomed as a positive

contribution during free play, it was characterised as unfair in the context of an imposed

order. Under the terms of the PBP, it was Danielle’s responsibility to ensure that all the

16

children had equal access to experiences ‘in a context of justice, fairness and mutual

respect’, and visible turn-taking was her way of managing this during storytime. Danielle

acted with understanding and acceptance towards Afolabe, and also according to good

early years practice, taking care to employ the technique of ‘reflective listening’ to tell

Afolabe that she understood his point of view before telling him why things had to be

different (McTavish, 2007). But the order in which children were sung to was Danielle’s

decision, and it was arbitrary; she had taken responsibility for the children’s equality rather

than helping them to generate it themselves. Hers was a pragmatic approach to

‘managing’ groups of children that is common among adults working in the early years

and, indeed, in life – I certainly recognise it in some of my own attempts to mediate

between my children. For Afolabe, it failed to take advantage of his tendency to do things

which benefited others, and I later wondered if this approach informed his attitude towards

adult problem-solving. In response to a question during our Thomas session about how

the ‘adult’ engine (Henry) might solve a dispute between two ‘child’ engines over a

favourite truck, Afolabe showed Henry taking the truck away from both. He implied this

was unkind and then showed the two ‘children’ taking the truck back and playing with it

together: a self-directed resolution.

The examples of Afolabe’s positive moral behaviour suggest that he already had a

moral understanding and that his moral competence was prompted by connection with

others through the kind of impulsive access to his emotions described by Kagan (1984)

and by Gilligan and Wiggins (1987), not the kind of reasoning offered by Danielle. Danielle

described Afolabe as someone who “tested boundaries” and who was ‘attention-seeking’,

suggesting that she may not have identified him formally as a moral agent. Yet both she

and the practitioner supervising the water activity unconsciously recognised his reliability

as a caring moral actor by choosing him as the person who might draw an outsider into an

existing social context – an informal recognition that was substantiated by his responses in

both situations.

None of this is intended to suggest that Afolabe was a misjudged angel. On one

occasion I watched as he repeatedly attempted to take a truck by force from another child,

screaming as he did so and pushing the other child hard enough to make him cry. But a

shift in perception might have enabled practitioners to see this behaviour not as ‘attention-

seeking’ or ‘selfish’ but as a vital element in his moral learning, illustrative of Dunn’s (1987:

107) view that children’s morality cannot be appreciated through ‘a focus on empathetic

17

behaviour alone’. Such a shift might enable ‘negative’ behaviour to be seen as a positive

contribution to learning; one that could be embraced through the Quality in diversity

framework (ECEF, 2003). It might also have allowed the practitioners’ recognition of

Afolabe’s competent generosity to inform all their approaches to his behaviour, and

suggested more participative practices in adult-led sessions.

Conclusion Gilligan and Wiggins (1987) and Kagan (1984) envisage the justice and caring frameworks

of morality as complementary, not as exclusive. The differing adult perceptions of

Afolabe’s behaviour suggest this interplay, as do the seemingly inconsistent actions of my

son Daniel’s playgroup friend. Afolabe’s experiences also point to the problems created for

young children if their actions are interpreted entirely according to the justice framework.

Only the caring framework makes it possible to see Afolabe’s impulsive behaviour as

evidence of a developing moral competence.

Although it is unlikely that Danielle had frameworks of morality in mind, she perceived

Afolabe’s wish to sing out of turn as a tension between justice and care, saying that he

could not prioritise the interests of his special friend (care) above those of other children

(injustice). However, her perception of justice was not objective; she had imposed an

arbitrary order and deemed it as representing justice. If the children were involved in

organising the group sessions – deciding how to say hello to each other, choosing what

stories would be told – Afolabe’s request may have been easily incorporated. Indeed, he

may not have made it at all if he had been involved in decisions which illustrate how group

cooperation works. This would have given Afolabe a chance to be perceived as being both

caring and just. It highlights the need always to keep in mind Miller’s (2003)

recommendations for young children’s participation and suggests that young children can

only benefit if the inclusive approach of Quality in diversity (ECEF, 2003) is used to offset

the Foundation Stage (QCA/DfEE, 2000) focus on practitioner responsibility. Observation

is key to effective practice within both frameworks.

Danielle’s relationship with Afolabe illustrates the effect of adults’ interpretation of

children’s behaviour and their view about children’s competency as moral agents.

Conversations with Danielle revealed a warmth in her regard for Afolabe which suggested

her willingness to engage in a caring relationship with him. But, in telling me about

Afolabe’s understanding of right and wrong, Danielle focused on the ‘attention-seeking’

18

(unjust) elements of his behaviour which created management difficulties rather than on

the generosity which caused her to suggest that Emmanuel sit next to him, or even her

own sense of fondness for him (care). Her professional thoughts were on her duty to

manage what appeared to be Afolabe’s lack of moral competence rather than on engaging

his competence at forging relationships. This leads me to ponder on the tension between

the adults’ eagerness to approach the children with affection and their tendency to speak

of the children as ‘selfish’ when considering specific questions of behaviour management.

The caring approach seems to be overlooked in relation to professional thinking and

behaviour management. If, in considering Afolabe’s understanding of right and wrong,

Danielle had talked about his generosity instead of his ‘attention-seeking’ – had focused

on her affection for him rather than her responsibility to manage – her planning for adult-

led group activities may have been different. A different approach to observing children

might be helpful here. The design of the Foundation Stage encourages practitioners to tie

observations directly to the ‘stepping stones’ in children’s development identified in the

framework, and perhaps makes it harder for practitioners to apply what they know of

individual children to the ideas and behaviour they observe.

If Afolabe’s impulsive generosity and his ability to engender affection can be perceived

as evidence of a caring morality – and I believe that they should – then his repeated

competence in these regards suggests that a Kantian link between rational thinking and

moral action is not a prerequisite for moral agency and that early years practitioners can

place greater confidence in their feelings towards children when planning for their

experiences. In this way, they will enable young children to recognise their own moral

agency, and to forge a greater trust in children’s morality among adults.

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