N. Maslovaty, Teachers' choice of teaching strategies for dealing with socio-moral dilemmas in the elementary school, J MORAL EDU, 29(4), 2000, pp. 429
Decision-making skills and coping with dilemmas are among the goals of educ
ational systems worldwide. This study examines 480 elementary school teache
rs' strategies for coping with socio-moral conflicts which arise in the cla
ssroom. Based on Oser and Althof's (1993) models for decision-making in int
erpersonal conflicts in the classroom and school contexts, we examined seve
n teaching strategies: avoiding, delegating to parents, delegating to schoo
l authorities, unilateral decision-making, incomplete discourse, complete d
iscourse and dialogue. Teachers felt responsibility for dealing with socio-
moral conflicts in the classroom. The choice of a strategy varied according
to the content of the dilemma and the teachers' personal belief systems as
well as teaching contexts and, to a lesser extent, personal background cha
racteristics. There is a case for developing teachers' educational and soci
al belief systems within learning communities and enriching their ways of t
hinking about and competencies for dealing with socio-moral conflicts, in t
he contexts of classroom, school and societal culture, in keeping with peda
gogical concepts arising from the constructivist approach to learning and d
evelopment.