The moral development in school sports in the european context: a study based on social-moral dilemmas

Abstract

School sports are an educational activity with a large participation in the national and international context. This article presents a study on moral development through social-moral dilemmas, with twelve- year-old school children involved in school sports in the European context: Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. To carry out this study a rating scale has been used for each of the dilemmas and a discussion group has been created to deliberate on three values: honesty, respect and companionship. The results associated to these dilemmas have been related to the Kohlberg’s stages, in order to scrutinize their level of moral development. Most participants are in the conventional level, and among them, girls get more significant results in those values than boys. Finally, a discussion relating these results with similar studies is presented.