ABSTRACT
This study determined and compared the cognitive competence and moral reasoning among pupils and students in Abia State. Five research questions were posed and four hypotheses were formulated and tested at the ( P< 0.05) level of significance. Cross- sectional developmental survey was the design used for the study. The sample population consisted of 360 pupils and students from primary five, JS II and SS II. The instrument which was validated by 3 experts was used for data collection. Pearson’s product correlation co-efficient was used to ascertain the internal consistency for the instrument. Means, standard deviation and the Pearson product moment correlation coefficient were used to answer the research questions; while the student- t statistics and ANOVA were used to test the null hypotheses. The result of the study showed that cognitive competence does not continue to increase with higher level in education or class. Moral reasoning ability increases with higher level of education and class in school. Gender had no significant influence in predicting cognitive competence and moral reasoning. Finally, that cognitive competence has a poor and negative relationship with moral reasoning ability of pupils and students.
CHAPTER ONE
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The general expectation of every society is to see her children develop in such a successive manner that their cognitive competency and moral reasoning will merge at each stage of development. Studies in child development attest that there are remarkable changes in physical, social, moral and cognitive domains of children as they advance from these stages: infancy – childhood – adolescent and adulthood (Case, 1985; Goswami, 2002). Child development refers to the biological, cognitive and socio-emotional changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescence as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy (Wikipedia Encyclopedia, 2009).
Cognitive development; an aspect of child development, is the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making from childhood through adolescence to adulthood (Peterson, 2008; Health Encyclopedia, 2009). In addition, cognitive development refers to how a person perceives thinking and gains understanding of his or her world through the interaction of genetic and learned factors. Learned factors here are socially created symbol systems such as language, writing and number systems, which vary from one society to another. Piaget (1983) asserts that cognitive development consist of a number of structural stages. By stages, he meant invariantly sequenced, qualitatively distinct levels that can meaningfully characterize developmental sequences of abilities across domains. Each of these stages form a developmental sequence that is characterized by qualitative re-structuring, hierarchical, integration, sophisticated and abstract levels of thought (Bjorklund, 1995; Pulaski 1980). Some of the main domains of cognitive development are information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development and memory development. However, since these domains require some mental and observable actions, an individual may be faced the challenge of competence or incompetence in cognitive tasks at a stage in development.
The word “competence’’ is a direct derivative of the latin word “competere”, literally meaning ‘competing’, an adjective indicating that one is able to engage in a competition (Encarta English Dictionary,2009).In essence, the word- competence presupposes an action, a form of activity, not a state. Goldfried and D’ Zurilla, (1961) defines competence as the effectiveness or adequacy with which an individual is capable of responding to various problematic situations, while Sternberg and Kolligian, (1990) defined it as a measure of ability; whether the observable performance of a person represent their underlying traits or capacity. In another perspective, Perrenoud (2000) defined competence as a capacity to mobilize diverse cognitive resource to meet a certain type of situation. In essence, the exercise of competence involves complex mental situations and schemes of thought which allow a performance of action which is relatively adapted to a situation. On the other hand, the word “cognitive” is the adjectival form of the word “cognition”. It is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge; relating to the processes of the use of reasoning, intuition and perception.
Cognitive competence is the degree of success in functioning within a specific environment with apparent discrepancy in age related trends.( Birren and Schaie,1990) Cognitive competence connotes the ability to carry out mental activities and process information as each stage of development demands (Nwachukwu, 2000) Furthermore, Wylie and Hodgen (2007) discussed cognitive competence as it applies to numeracy, literacy, logical problem solving, social and attitudinal skills . According to Nwachukwu (1995), cognitive competence can manifest in the form of fluency of language, literacy, well developed memory strategies, reasoning and problem solving while Wylie, Ferral, Hodgen and Thompson (2006) opined that cognitive competence can be measured in reading, writing, comprehension, mathematics, standard progressive matrics tasks, rating of core subjects, communication, social skills and self management. The researcher operationally defines cognitive competence as the ability to perform and carry out measurable skills as in language, mathematics and moral reasoning tasks as developmental stage and age demands.
Also, one of the major changes that characterize a child’s development is moral development. Moral development involves thoughts, behaviours and feelings regarding standards of right and wrong, (Santrock, 2001). Moral development has an intrapersonal and interpersonal dimension. The intrapersonal regulates a person activity when he/she is engaged in social interaction while the interpersonal dimension regulates peoples’ social interaction and arbitrates conflict (Gibbs 2001). Moral reasoning as a facet of moral development is not just a matter of moral issues, ideas or attributes, but it has a strong cognitive aspect. Kohlberg (1989) maintained that what one conceptualizes as moral reasoning is a cognitive competence. Oladele (1998) defined moral reasoning as the internalized urge in an individual to acquire and conform to the norms and values of a society to which he/she belongs. Furthermore, moral reasoning is defined as the ability or tendency to think and make decisions in situations in which there may be conflicting values, norms, rules, laws or desires. (Faber, Kupanoff, Carlo, Laible, 1999). However the researcher defines moral reasoning operationally as the ability to make actionable decisions in real life dilemma situation.
Changes which manifest in an individual’s thought, intelligence, reasoning and language as a result of development go with developmental task at each stage. A developmental task is a task which an individual has to and wants to takle in a particular life period (Havighust, 1952) Havighust opined that the process of living from birth to death consists of people working their way through from one stage of development to another by solving their problems in each stage. He identified six major age periods and presented typical developmental tasks for each of these periods from infancy to later maturity period. In a similar manner, independent studies carried out by Piaget (1952) and Kohlberg (1958), show that there are different stages of cognitive and moral development. Each of these stages goes with a measure of a developmental requirement cum task which an individual has to accomplish at a given stage and age. A stage is a period of time, often associated with a known chronological age range, during which a behavior or physical characteristics is qualitatively different from what it is at other ages. It is assumed that developmental change runs parallel with chronological age; age itself cannot cause development. Findings of accomplishment of many developmental tasks indicate typical chronological ages associated with developmental milestones. (Cole 1986. Goetting, 1986). Milestones are changes in specific physical and cognitive abilities such as walking, understanding language, moral reasoning and calculation that mark the end of one developmental period and the beginning of another.
The researcher, however from his observation and interaction with some students in Abia state at different developmental stages perceived a gross decline in cognitive competence and moral reasoning ability as they advance in age and successive classes in school. Another issue of research importance in this study is that of gender. There is a considerable literature on the idea that gender may influence cognitive competence and moral reasoning. (Bussey and Bandura, 1999. Gilligan, 1982). From the moment of birth, a child’s gender influences the opportunities she or he will experience. Within a few years of life, children begin to form their own ideas about gender that subsequently guide the types of activities they practice, what they find interesting and the achievements they attain. These activities reflect and perpetuate gender roles and stereotypes in the society (Wood and Eagly, 2002). Gender role is a set of expectations that prescribe how females and males should think, act and feel while gender stereotypes are broad categories that reflect people’s impressions and belief about females and males.
There are seemingly gender differences in computational tasks, verbal skills, and mathematics and conceptual abilities . However, while most studies (Linn and Hyde,1989, Beller and Gafni,1996) conclude in favour of males over females in cognitive competence and moral reasoning, others submit that females perform better than males in cognitive competence and moral reasoning tasks. According to Nowell and Hedges (1998), science and math are the academic areas in which boys have historically done better than girls in North America. However, gender differences in maths and science have narrowed over the recent years. Hyde (2004) believe that the cognitive difference between females and males has been exaggerated. In addition, Hyde points out that there is considerable overlap in the distribution of males and females scores on math and visuo-spatial task. Kohlberg (1981) opined that there is a gender difference in moral reasoning. He suggested that females operated at lower levels of moral development than their male counterparts. However, Mundy-Castle and Bundy (1988) in another study concluded that there is no significant difference in males and females in moral reasoning. Independent studies on the influence of gender on cognitive competence and moral reasoning seemingly points to an indecisive conclusion while the debate lasts.
