Experimental approach to the study of spiritual and moral education in children of preschool age

Abstract

Introduction. Interest in the issues of spirituality, moral background is objectively determined by the transformations in all spheres of life and human activity in recent decades, including fundamental changes in the value-based system. The Objective is to describe an experimental program of studying the level of spiritual and moral education in children of preschool age. Based on the analysis of the data and considering the spirituality and morality in children as a complicated integrative education, we identify intellectual, cognitive, value-based, motivational and behavioural components. The main hypothesis of the study is the assumption of the dependence of the spiritual and moral level on the determined systematic work of the spiritual and moral potential of the person, their culture and valued at each age stage. The basic levels of ontogenesis are emphasized. Procedure. The first stage of the research included analysis of the works in the field of «spirituality» and «morality», which allowed us to determine the specific features of spiritual and moral education of the 5-year-old children and to design a program of experimental study. The second stage was based on the comprehensive program of experimental research, i.e. a system of test methods aimed at studying the selected components of the spiritual and moral education. The population consisted of 90 fiveyear-old children. Findings. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the experimental data obtained at the third stage of our study showed that a high level of spiritual and moral education is recorded only in 21% of the respondents. The majority of respondents (57%) scored the average level of spiritual and moral education. 22% of the respondents score a low level of spiritual and moral education. Conclusion. The study showed that less than one third of the respondents demonstrated a high level of spiritual and moral education. The majority of preschool children did not know about the spiritual and moral norms of social behaviour, and also they lacked regular rules of behaviour, which suggests that the majority of the research participants did not correspond to age-related opportunities and require targeted psychological and pedagogical assistance.

Keywords

• preschool age
• developmental features
• 5-year-olds
• personality
• value culture of the individual
• spiritual and moral education of the individual