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481 publication date:Sep, 2016
Understanding Children’s Conceptual Development of Distributive Justice along the Implicit-Explicit Dimension
    Author:Hua-Nu Xu, Wan-Chi Wong
Research Article

 Based on the Representational Redescription model (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992), the present study investigated children’s conceptual development of distributive justice along the implicit-explicit dimension. In this microdevelopmental study, forty-two children aged 5 to 9 years were asked to complete the distribution tasks and to provide verbal explanations for seven hypothetical scenarios in the first step. They were then invited to complete the judgment task of imagining themselves as judges who had to evaluate the appropriateness of a child’s distributions in the seven scenarios. After making their judgment, the children received feedback on the appropriate distributions in the seven scenarios, which was presented in visual form as decisions of a large group of judges. In the last phase, the children completed another set of distribution tasks for seven similar scenarios and provided verbal explanations. Concerning the concepts of “equality” and “equity”, children’s performances were significantly higher on distribution behavior and judgment than on verbal explanation. Regarding the concepts of “need” and “integrated conception of justice”, there were no significant differences in children’s performances on distribution behavior, judgment, or verbal explanation; however, analysis including the data collected after feedback revealed significantly better performances on distribution behavior than verbal explanation. The same result was attained in a similar analysis in the post-feedback stage with regard to the concept of “distribution based on empathy”. Overall, children’s mastery of each subconcept of distributive justice showed differences in their representations along the implicit-explicit dimension. It is noteworthy that the effect of feedback was supported by the improvement in children’s mastery of the concepts of “equality”, “need”, and “distribution based on empathy” in the explicit representation. In the analysis of developmental trends by age, the 7-and 9-year-olds performed significantly better than did the 5-year-olds in their mastery of the concepts of “equality”, “equity”, and “integrated conception of justice”. By introducing a new theoretical and methodological approach to the study of children’s conceptual understanding of distributive justice, we found differentiated forms of implicit and explicit representations of distributive justice. This approach also enables the refined analyses of children’s developmental patterns with regard to the subconcepts of distributive justice along the implicit-explicit dimension. Taking consideration of the effects of the feedback on the development of children’s concept of distributive justice, this study sheds light on the practice of moral education by reminding us that children may acquire implicit understanding without educators’ explicit verbal explanation.



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關鍵詞: childhood, concept of distributive justice, moral development, Representational Redescription model


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