This study is about the correlation between moral emotions, moral judgment, and environmental sensitivity of elementary school students. I would like to discuss the complementary aspects of moral education and environmental education and the use of mo...
This study is about the correlation between moral emotions, moral judgment, and environmental sensitivity of elementary school students. I would like to discuss the complementary aspects of moral education and environmental education and the use of moral education methodology for environmental education to help develop moral sensitivity and moral judgment.
However, there is no research on how moral emotions and moral judgments relate to environmental sensitivity, and most studies are focused on what factors affect environmental sensitivity, so it is necessary to study the relationship between moral emotions, moral judgments, and environmental sensitivity.
The data of 150 male and female elementary school students collected for this study were analyzed by the following method using the SPSS 28 statistical program. First, the mean and standard deviation were investigated to find out the general trend of the study subjects. Second, an independent sample t-test was conducted to find out the difference in moral emotions, moral judgment, and environmental sensitivity according to gender, and the ANOVA test was conducted to find out the difference in variables according to grade, and the difference between grades was examined as a result of the Scheffe post-test. Third, Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to find out the relationship between moral emotions, moral judgment, and environmental sensitivity of elementary school students, and simple regression analysis was conducted with environmental sensitivity as a dependent variable to find out the effect of each area on environmental sensitivity. In addition, regression analysis was conducted as a dependent variable of environmental sensitivity to find out the variables with decisive explanatory power among the sub-factors of each area.
The results of this study are as follows. First, environmental sensitivity, moral emotion, and moral judgment have a significant positive correlation. Accordingly, it can be seen that various moral learning methods and tools that have been studied to cultivate moral emotions and moral judgment can be used as a method to cultivate environmental sensitivity.
Second, environmental sensitivity has a positive correlation with moral judgment, but has a strong positive correlation with moral emotion. In particular, it was found that positive emotions, which are sub-areas of moral emotions, have a stronger positive correlation with environmental sensitivity than negative emotions and have a high explanatory power. Considering this, it was found that it is more effective to develop environmental sensitivity by including elements such as empathy and sympathy, which are positive emotions, rather than educational contents and methods and tools to stimulate human shame and guilt caused by environmental destruction.
Third, there was a gender difference between moral emotions and sub-elements of moral judgment that had a positive correlation with environmental sensitivity. Through this, it can be seen that environmental sensitivity education should be provided in consideration of gender in order to reduce the level difference between male and female students in areas where the average of environmental sensitivity is low. Differences between male and female students occurred in empathy, which is a sub-factor of moral emotion, rule independence, and universality, which are sub-factors of moral judgment. Therefore, the development of teaching and learning methods, tools, and programs that can compensate for low-level sub-factors considering gender will help reduce the difference in environmental sensitivity between male and female students.
In the field of environmental education, there have been studies on environmental sensitivity, environmental responsibility behavior, and environmental moral sensitivity. However, in previous studies, few studies have been conducted on the relationship between positive and negative emotions in emotion, and the relationship between moral judgment elements in the cognitive domain and environmental sensitivity.
There was a study that showed that the relationship between environmental responsibility behavior and environmental sensitivity had a correlation, but there was no empirical proof study on the relationship between emotional and cognitive factors and sub-factors that had a significant impact on environmental sensitivity. In addition, there were many cases of relying only on literature research that environmental sensitivity would be related to moral emotion and moral perception.
Therefore, this study can help develop research on emotional, emotional, cognitive, and judgment in environmental education by clarifying the clear correlation between emotion, judgment, and sub-factors related to environmental sensitivity. Furthermore, by specifically suggesting the limitations of this study in terms of research subjects and methods, it suggested moral emotions representing emotions and emotions for cultivating environmental sensitivity, moral judgment representing cognition and judgment, and the relationship between sub-factors and environmental sensitivity.