Encouraging Positive Justice Reasoning and Perspective‐taking Skills: Two Educational Interventions

There has been a need for developmentally appropriate methods of social/moral instruction in the primary grades, particularly methods that would require little teacher preparation or financial investment in materials. This study investigated the efficacy of two such methods: role?play and structured discussion. Subjects were 90 children from Grades One?Three who participated over an eight?week period. Interviews of positive justice reasoning and perspective?taking skills showed significant growth for both role?play and structured discussion subjects when compared to those in a control group.