Peer Group Research, Impact On Children's Moral Development

Many factors can affect the devolepment of children's morality. If classified in terms of the ages of the persons interacting, the factors can be sorted into adult's influence and peer's influence. We usually pay much attention to the study of the adult's influence (mainly the influence of education). But out of various reasons, the study of the peer's influence is nearly ignored. If some studies can be seen as this kind, most of them focus on the influence of the whole class instead of the influence of the spontaneously formed peer group. In fact, the influence of peer group has more advantaged predominance over that of adults and the whole class. At present, most children are in one-child families, they do not have many places and opportunities to play and affiliate with other children. Some children's morality development and mental health are affected by this situation. All this make it more urgent to study the peer group and its influence.The methods of the research are mainly documents study, questionnaire and interviewing. The research analyzes, investigates and discusses the influence of peer group upon the children's morality development on the basis of many predecessors' work.Moral cognition, moral emotions and moral behavior are universally recognized three essential elements of morality. The thesis studies the positive influence of peer group upon the development of children's morality mainly from these three aspects. In the aspect of moral cognition, the interaction between a child and his peer group enhances the ability of perspective taking (role taking) which is the direct condition for the development of moral cognition. In the aspect of moral emotions, due to the closeness of the members of a peer group, the feelings and mood caused bysome affairs can be easily sensed and lead to the corresponding feelings and mood and thus accelerate the formation and development of empathy experience. At the same time, the reaction of his peer group can enhance the occurrence and development of some kind of moral emotions. In the aspect of moral behavior, friendliness and companionship are the main characteristics of the behavior happened within a peer group, the peer group provides an ideal stage to rehearse the just learnt principles. Furthermore, the interaction with his peer group is an important way to develop his self discipline. In addition, peer group has unsubstitutable positive influence on the development of the children's self education. Certainly, peer group is only an essential condition for the children's morality development; its influence is not unrestricted and unlimited. Besides, under some conditions, it has some negative influences.The thesis also analyzes the psychological mechanism of the peer group's influence upon the children's morality development which includes reinforcement, imitation, conformity, etc. At the last part of the thesis, the author proposes some suggestions to utilize the positive influence and hinder the negative influence. The teaching staff should change conceptions and treat correctly the children's intercourse and their peer groups; try to find out the skeleton of the peer group; lead the moral environment of a peer group to the class; organize various abundant educative activities and how to nip in the bud.