Moral imagination and art: Echoes from a child's soul

This study explored the moral imagination of ten at-risk urban fifth grade students through their personal symbolic language, as manifested through their perceiving (moral discriminations), feeling (moral affect), and making systems (moral thought) (Gardner, 1973).; This qualitative (art based) action research was guided by Perkins' (1994) theory of thinking dispositions developed through reflective intelligence. His work was a particularly good conceptual mate with Gardner's perceiving, feeling, and making systems that provided the framework and acted as a lens by which to examine moral imagination in the writings and thoughts of at-risk urban fifth grade students (1973). Qualitative data was triangulated using entry interviews, exit interviews and student writing samples.; Moral thought (moral thinking) as stimulated by a work of art, and manifested through personal symbolic language revealed the students' development of an empathic cognitive product. Students' moral imagination which encompassed moral discriminations, moral affect, and moral thought, created a cognitive product (thinking that revealed a sense of self), that was manifested through personal symbolic language and implied a moral intent for behavior.; Art has an impact on cognitive thought. Curriculum can be designed to foster the development of cognitive symbolic products thus providing marginalized students a more enhanced sense of self. This sense of self may foster an increased moral intent having originated with the students' moral imagination.