Morality and Ecological Moral: contributions to the teaching practice

Abstract

This research searched to investigate if the acquisition of the notion of respect to the environment, that we call “ecological moral”, is constructed during the childish development, solidarily to the construction of the morality, presupposing that the notion of respect on the ecological field is the same that found the conquest of the moral autonomy. For this investigation, it had been taken a sample of 15 participants, five by age group – form 6 to 8 years old, 10 to 11 years old and 13 to 15 years old. Through the piagetian clinical method, it was told to the children and adolescents two groups of stories: three stories were taken from Piaget’s studies about morality, focusing the conscience of rules and the notions of lie and justice, and four another hypothetical stories were created specifically to study the respect to the environment, focusing, respectively, the selective collection, the extinction of the birds, the pollution of a river and the cutting of tree. The statements of the participants were analysed according to the theoretical reference of Piaget concerning to the morality, also helped by some studious that have been amplifying the application field of Piaget’s theory. The data analysis allowed us to set up three levels for the development of the notion of respect to the environment, proving that the ecological moral has a psychogenetic dimension and there is a relation between the development of the morality and the acquisition of the ecological moral.