According to Daddis, the grant will fund research interview and transcription equipment and salaries for student research assistants. The research study will employ a team of undergraduate assistants who will collect data from three age groups (i.e., fourth, seventh, and ninth grades) at two time points – one year apart. This cross-sequential research design will assess change within and between groups of students and will employ self-report surveys, sorting tasks, and semi-structured interviews.
“Much of the research on student misbehavior treats children as passive objects whose behavior is determined by outside forces like classroom conditions, peer pressure, and classroom management,” said Daddis.
“The focus of this research is to examine the reasoning that underlies adolescents’ own thinking about school rules and their behavior,” he said.
“Developmental psychologists know great deal about how children and adolescents come to understand morality, and unfortunately, much of the redirection and socialization efforts used in schools do not complement the ways that youth come to know right from wrong,” added Daddis. “The proposed research will illuminate ways that we can coordinate research on moral development and our reactions to misbehavior.”
