Effects of Three Methods of Group Discussion about Moral Dilemmas, Dialogue In-small Groups and Lecturing on the Improvement of Moral Judgment in Second Grade High School Female Students

The purpose of this research was investigating the effects of three methods of group discussion in the classroom about moral dilemma, dialogue about moral dilemma in cooperative-small groups and lecturing about moral issues the improvement of students’ moral judgments. Therefore, by random sampling, one high school amongst all high schools of 18 education districts of Tehran was selected and 77 students of that school were randomly selected and assigned to two experimental groups (group discussion, included 23 people and dialogue in small groups included 26 people) and the control group (lecture method included 28 subjects). Research method was experimental pretest-pottest with a controlgroup. For the assessment of moral judgment, Defining Issue test (DIT) was used both in pretest and posttest. The reliability index of this scale was verified (µ=.86). Conducting pretest the treatments included group discussion about moral dilemmas, dialogue in cooperative-small groups about moral dilemmas and lecturing by teacher about moral issues were presented to experimental and control groups respectively for 12 sessions. Data were analyzed by t-test for independent groups, ANOVA, ANCOVA, Wilcoxon test for matched-pairs signed-ranks and chi square. The results indicated that: group discussion and dialogue insmall groups had positive and significance (x²) on the improvement of moral reasoning of students but lecture method had no effect on moral reasoning, Besides, the effect of dialogue in small groups was more than group discussion on students’ moral reasoning. And both group discussion and dialogue groups had a better performance than lecturing grouping terms of higher level of moral judgment, which was statistically significant. Also, results of analysis of covariance showed that the positive changes in moral judgements in group discussion and dialogue groups were not due to conducting OIT pretest and familiarity with the test, rather, participating in experimental groups had cause the improvement of moral judgment.