Stud Philos Educ (2009) 28:189–192

DOI 10.1007/s11217-008-9119-x

J. Russell, How Children Become Moral Selves: Building

Character and Promoting Citizenship in Education
Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2007

Joyce E. Bellous

Published online: 7 November 2008

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Russell’s book is a rich source of information about children’s capacity for moral con-
versation. Her research was a longitudinal, micro-ethnographic study—an in-depth
exploration of a single class group in an Irish primary school over a four and one half year
period.
The book is divided into two parts, the first is theoretical; the second marries theory with
research outcomes of her method. She asserts that these two parts of the book constitute a
hermeneutical circle: each informs, explains and expands upon the other; each is part of the
whole text. A hermeneutical stance is central to understanding her book since she tends to
be descriptive rather than prescriptive; she describes rather than argues her position. She is
convinced that teachers should listen to children first of all and in teaching them how to
converse among themselves, it is essential to build community so that all feel safe to say
what they believe is true, care about saying it, and want to hear what others think as well.
The method she employed is based on but not limited to Matthew Lipman’s approach
referred to as Philosophy with Children, which she developed into a community of enquiry
that allowed her to gather data about children’s growth in moral thinking and their capacity
to converse about moral issues. She concludes that the children increased their competence
as community of enquiry members ‘‘to engage with each other, make reasoned judgements,
justify their reasons, and change stance in light of the opinion of others’’ (Russell, p. 170).
In analyzing videos of moral conversation, they could recognize when speakers did not
justify their reasons, got off track, did not challenge each other enough, and did not build
on each other’s argument (p. 14). She observes that as time went on they became more able
to discuss in depth and began to change a view without compromising unless they saw a
sufficient reason for doing so (p. 14). These are significant developments for children to
achieve through sustained moral conversation.
The overall outcome of her research is to advocate for a child’s need to reflect on the
way he or she is thinking, in community with others. She distinguishes the aims of
conversation as it was experienced in community from the goals of sophistry by pointing

J. E. Bellous (&)
McMaster Divinity College, McMaster University, Room #236, 1280 Main St. W., Hamilton,
ON L8S 4K1, Canada
e-mail: bellousj@mcmaster.ca; joycebellous@gmail.com

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out that the group’s search for truth and meaning, as opposed to the sophistry of winning an
argument by any means, ‘‘is more relevant to children now than ever because of the
confusion and uncertainty of living in a pluralistic society’’ (p. 182). Her concern for their
moral development is motivated by her agreement with the view that the greatest threat in
modern liberal societies is not that children will ‘‘believe something too deeply but that
they will believe nothing very deeply at all’’ (p. 65).
I recommend her book for its depth of theoretical insight and the recommendation she
makes that teachers must learn how to listen to children in their classrooms because they
have a right to be heard and require the competences involved in having their opinions
taken seriously, as well as taking them seriously themselves, if they are to be effective
citizens in our modern pluralistic societies. In her research, children showed a capacity to
‘‘move beyond a rule-bound morality to explore a more expansive notion of the good’’ and
their collaborative search for truth [was significant] in resisting a slide towards subjec-
tivism and relativism’’ (p. 173). These are some of the competences we would hope to
instil in children as the bases for their growing civility.
Russell makes important claims. In general, she asserts that this community of enquiry
had a formative effect on the moral knowledge of children involved and they experienced
an enhanced self-esteem through the process. She proposes that their increased confidence
stemmed in part from realizing that what they said mattered, with the additional outcome
that they grasped more firmly a personal sense of identity, since she says ‘‘self-under-
standing…is always an understanding of one’s relatedness to others and to the good’’ (p.
171). In her view, children have a need for others ‘‘to become themselves and to under-
stand the selves they become’’ (p. 172); a community of enquiry is an opportunity for them
to realize that need and practice its application so that communities of enquiry positively
influence the social construction of the self (p. 183).
In part one, she outlines universalist developmental approaches from Piaget onward that
stipulate the general path children’s moral thinking will normally take, constructivist
approaches that posit children have their own ways of thinking, and communal approaches
which introduce the need for others that children have as they become moral selves. She
analyses Gilligan’s particularist approach in light of contextual approaches that suggest
people use a variety of moral reasoning depending upon the context in which a discussion
of moral issues takes place (p. 123). She juxtaposes contextual approaches with Gilligan’s
approach to say gender did not play the role among her children that Gilligan’s (1982) view
would predict. The role of gender in her research is complex and somewhat confusing, a
point I want to explore more fully later on.
Her book holds a place among the literature that examines capacities children have as
meaning-making agents, which is the human activity that forms a moral worldview.
Matthew Lipman, Robert Coles and British theorists such as Jane Erricker, Clive Erricker,
Cathy Ota focus their research by first listening to children. In addition, Robert Kegan
developed a way of thinking about moral formation based on Piaget’s stage theory that
outlines how we make meaning from the time we are very young. Russell’s work adds to
this literature and offers important insights. In my view, familiarity with Kegan’s work
would offer a larger framework for thinking about moral formation based on a capacity
people have to make sense of their experience, which Russell noted as a need in her
children. Kegan relies on Piaget’s research and focuses not on the developmental stages he
drew, but on an overarching process of meaning-making he believes is implicit in Piaget’s
research. As a result, Kegan marries constructivist and developmentalist approaches in an
attempt to explain how people make meaning out of life experience.

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How Children Become Moral Selves 191

While her research began by talking with children in the classroom, the book begins
with a theoretical framework that undergirds the primary structures of her assertion that
children are active agents in building their own perspectives but that they require guidance
from adults in order to flourish as moral agents. She noted in her discussion of Vygotsky
that the ‘‘child’s full potential is reached by the scaffolding or guidance of an adult or with
more competent peers’’ (p. 79). I appreciate the breadth of her theoretical framework,
which includes theorists from Aristotle to Peirce. Her aim is to create a backdrop for
communities of enquiry in the classroom and she builds that background by a compre-
hensive summary of moral theories. It takes a careful reading however to make the
hermeneutical circle complete; it would be helpful to have a summary of the aspects of her
theoretical research that most fully undergird her community of enquiry method.
A community of enquiry, as she outlines it, fosters communication in mixed gender
settings that include the perspectives of care and justice, a point Russell makes in response
to ongoing debates that started with Kohlberg’s moral theory and his student Carol Gil-
ligan’s response to it. A community of enquiry engenders critical thinking and is
communitarian in emphasis, since it ‘‘transcends the thinking of any one individual’’ (p.
81). As mentioned, she stipulates a scaffolding role for a teacher in these communities, a
role that alternates with the Socratic role of being a midwife of thought. At the heart of
communities of enquiry is the listening and speaking together that allows children to state
and examine their personal moral judgements. The aim of these conversations is to pro-
mote growth and change in the ways children form, inform and transform their moral point
of view by being with others that are equally engaged in the adventure.
The second part of Russell’s book is a qualitative analysis of classroom practice that
sets out to measure moral awareness in children and early adolescents. The topics she
investigates include cognitive processes, moral rectitude, friendship and interpersonal
relationships. An underlying question she addresses is focused on the significance of
children’s sense of right and wrong. The community of enquiry is a real-life situation in
which children practice and observe good thinking and interpersonal growth in moral
reflection. Her research and theoretical work is persuasive. While she acknowledges the
limitations of basing practice on one case study, the book is an encouraging antidote to the
current climate in many schools, not only in Ireland, of inadequate preparation for the
experience of being collaborative citizens that children must develop before the skill is
expected of them as adults. Children need time and opportunity to talk through the
complexity of their moral life together so they can face effectively the demands of a world
that will depend on their willingness and ability to provide its collegiality and leadership.
An unresolved issue, from my perspective, is what to make of Russell’s observations
about gender differences. She concludes that children in her research did not conform to
Gilligan’s different voice theory among boys and girls. In terms of gender orientation, she
reports the theory that boys tend to argue from impartialist perspectives while girls take an
empathetic stance; this is the theory she believes her research does not support (p. 181).
She notes that children in her research were able to use diverse patterns in their moral
reasoning, i.e., both a care and a justice stance, to use Gilligan’s terms. She also observes
that her research is ambiguous on a position derived from other people’s research that
showed a lowering of self-esteem in girls from 10 years old and onward while boys’ self-
esteem does not appear to suffer in the same way (p. 162). She concurs that girls in her
research were reticent after age ten to partake fully in the discussion and were willing to
allow the boys to dominate (p. 162; p. 181) and that it seemed harder for girls than boys to
be authentic (p. 165). What are we to gather from her observations about the overall

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contextual effects of this community of enquiry on boys and girls in terms of gender
identity, which in my view is a fundamental dimension of moral identity?
Russell chose to take the girls out of the mixed setting to converse with them as a
separate group. During this session, girls confided that they found the boys’ mocking tone
intimidating. They expressed, in my view, significant skill in offering plausible reasons
why boys might try to exercise power over them. They said boys were trying to maintain a
certain reputation in the group for strength and prowess; girls chose to withdraw as a result,
which in one way could be read as an empathetic response. Being empathetic with others
does not automatically lead to making wise personal choices. Were the girls supporting
some needs they perceived in the boys’ behaviour, or were they refusing to compete
against those needs so as not to contribute to the boys’ loss of face? Is not the girls’ keen
observation and explanation of male behaviour and withdrawal from the enquiry an out-
come of empathy? Perhaps the girls did not use a care perspective in speech, but did they
not act it out—and to their own detriment? Why do girls withdraw from situations such as
this one after the age of 10 years?
Russell spends time discussing what in current research on bullying is understood as a
difference between boys and girls: boys bully physically; girls bully relationally. I suggest
physical prowess evident in boys, when it is undisciplined, is a foundation for physical
bullying and empathy in girls, when it is unschooled by compassion for themselves, is a
basis for relational bullying and it is also a plausible basis for their withdrawal from mixed
gender groupings. The small girl-only group Russell gathered together was well aware of
emotional hurt caused by other girls (p. 164).
Russell criticizes Gilligan’s research on gender differences by pointing to a range of
criticisms that it has received, but her book does not help us understand why her com-
munity of enquiry was not an antidote to an overall tendency in young adolescent girls to
disappear after age 10. It was important to her to point out that her research did not confirm
Gilligan’s theory but what was it in the dynamics of this community of enquiry that
allowed girls to silence themselves by giving preference to boys’ needs to appear brave,
strong and competent (in their view at least)? Why did it seem good to Russell to pull out
girls into a separate group if both genders were equally able to use diverse patterns of
moral reasoning?
The issue I am raising is not only a gender one; it has to do with another aspect, already
mentioned, about the formation of a moral self. Russell is clear that communities of
enquiry, such as the one she developed with these children, are instructive in the social
construction of the self. What did the girls and boys learn about themselves as sexual
beings by being together in this conversational community? I am referring to sexuality in
the broad sense; gender refers to ways identity is socially constructed within given cultural
settings based on sexual differences and the meanings we attach to those differences. If a
community of enquiry is working effectively, if boys and girls are capable of using a
diversity of moral argument, why did the girls withdraw? Has Russell’s research, as useful
as it is in so many respects, really shown that boys and girls do not conform to Gilligan’s
analysis of gendered moral reasoning? Is not Gilligan’s research just as much about context
as it is about gender?

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