8.1 Introduction

In this chapter we propose a methodological approach: we intend to explore the relations between children’s representations of moral issues as elaborated in dialogue (dialogue on ethics, DoE) and the ethical dimension of the children’s moral conduct towards each other (ethics of dialogue, EoD), where we expect to find interesting relations to explore. For example, if a child expresses tolerance towards a character in a video, to what extent does that child express tolerance towards the ideas and utterances of other children present in the interactive situation? The values we intend to focus on are the three main values at the heart of DIALLS: tolerance, empathy, and inclusion. We will examine the possible reciprocity between talking and doing, form and content, meta-dialogue and dialogue.

The moral development of the child has been much researched, yet rarely considered in contexts of social interaction at a sequential microgenetic level of analysis (Lemke 2001). This situation is surprising since moral development involves cognition, emotion and conduct in a rich social context, and microgenetic analysis can help comprehend this complexity. Short and midterm time spans in particular settings, as well as during long-term time spans (Scribner 1985) fit the observation of moral development. However, much research on the child’s moral development aims to understand the child’s individual moral stance towards, for example, classical moral dilemmas (i.e. “my mummy does not see me and would not know I did it, then should I play with the prohibited toys?”), yet takes for granted the relevance for children of the question, pre-defined by adults, involved in understanding children’s moral stances in their social interactions with their peers. Additionally, much of such research deals with observing young children with and without surveillance, in order to examine compliance with parent/adult “dos” vs. “don’ts”, hardly considering the quality of the parent–child discourse, and not all considering any kind of peer-interaction (Grusec and Goodnow 1994; Konchanska and Aksan 1995).

Considering the moral development of the child over different timescales, through different age groups, and within both adult and child interactions, seems an advantageous perspective that can allow the researchers gain new insights regarding moral development, in the present case, within the DIALLS project (see Chapter 1). The project is based on the implementation of a dialogic perspective, an ethical stance deliberately adopted by pedagogues: children and young adolescents are invited to interact around wordless books and videos that invite the construction of a narrative, while being accountable to the other, to reasoning and to knowledge (see Chapter 5). The design of the activities in the program affords the emergence of emotions by skimming over the wordless stories, conducting discussions in which emotions felt are articulated, and internalizing these emotions in further discussions. The program opens an opportunity to explore the general hypothesis—largely grounded in research on moral development—that moral development depends on different kinds of interactions between children and adults, or among children. The DIALLS project aims at identifying phenomena that indicate this development in the context of dialogic teaching.

The design of this program offers three different levels of participation: whole-class teacher-mediated interaction; small-group teacher-mediated interaction; small-group unmediated interaction (for more details see Chapter 1). It is important to stress that in the framework of the DIALLS program the teacher does not play the role of a lecturer holding knowledge and correct answers, but rather that of a mediator conducting guided participation within a framework of adaptive intervention. The different interaction levels (whole-class, mediated group, unmediated group) are all performed within context, thus enabling the DoE/EoD analysis. This analysis is expected to bridge between aspects of moral conduct and moral judgement, both interwoven into the dialogue.

We first introduce a short review of research on moral development (Sect. 8.2), after which we outline an educational interventionist program on moral development, focusing on the DIALLS-EU project (Sect. 8.3), then present a proposed methodological approach to microgenetic analysis of DoE, EoD and the relations between them (Sect. 8.4). Finally, we conclude and discuss future work (Sect. 8.5).

8.2 Moral Development: A Succinct Review of Moral Education in the Light of Advancements in Moral Development

8.2.1 Foundational Theories of Moral Development

The first psychologists that studied moral development considered the needs of the individual vs. the needs of society. For Freud, these needs lead to tension, and moral development proceeds when the individual’s desires are repressed by the values of significant socializing agents. The behavioral theory replaced the struggle between internal and external forces by the power of external forces (reinforcement contingencies) in shaping moral development. Using the Clinical Interview Method, Piaget (1965) found that young children were focused on authority mandates, and that with age children become autonomous, and evaluate action from a set of independent principles of morality.

Kohlberg and Hersh (1977), whose research was influenced by Piaget’s approach, saw imitation of perceived models and seeking to validate them as the beginning of moral development. For Kohlberg, the common patterns of social life are universal since they occur in all cultures in social institutions (families, peer-groups, cooperative work for mutual defense and sustenance). The more one is prompted to imagine how others experience things and imaginatively to take their roles, the more quickly one learns to function well in cooperative human interactions. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development correspond to a sequence of progressively more inclusive social circles (family, peers, community, etc.), within which humans seek to operate competently. When those groups function well, oriented by reciprocity and mutual care and respect, growing humans adapt to larger and larger circles of justice, care, and respect. Each stage of moral cognitive development is the realization in conscious thought of the relations of justice, care, and respect exhibited in a wider circle of social relations.

Kohlberg's theory has been criticized as emphasizing justice to the exclusion of other values and so may not adequately address the arguments of those who value other moral aspects of actions. For example, Gilligan (1977) attacked Kohlberg’s theory, considering it to be excessively androcentric. She developed an alternative theory of moral reasoning based on the ethics of caring (cf. also Higham and De Vynck 2020). Kohlberg’s theory is still vibrant, however, because he has greatly contributed to applied work on moral education in schools. Kohlberg’s first method of moral education was to examine the lives of moral exemplars who practiced principled morals such as Socrates, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. His understanding that moral exemplars have an important place in moral education has growing support. He also initiated the introduction of discussions around moral dilemmas in schools. It was found that such discussions best increase moral reasoning when the individual’s interlocutor is using reasoning that is one stage above their own.

In spite of the strong criticism of the alleged universality of Kohlberg’s stage-theory of moral development, research on moral development has adopted a persistent universalist twist. Turiel’s Social Domain Theory (1983) shows how individuals from many cultures differentiate moral (fairness, equality, justice), societal (conventions, traditions), and psychological concepts from early in development throughout life.

8.2.2 Emotions, Values and Moral Development

A major research trend has focused on how emotions motivate individuals to engage in moral acts and influence moral development. These emotions are said to be linked to moral development because they are evidence to, and reflective of, an individual’s set of moral values; moral values which must have undergone beforehand a process of internalization. The values we focus on are the three main values at the heart of DIALLS: tolerance, empathy, and inclusion (Lähdesmäki et al. 2020; Chapter 4—this volume). Empathy, inclusion and tolerance are not emotions, but are studied especially within the Social Domain Theory perspective, according to which children pay attention to different variables when judging or evaluating exclusion. These variables include social categories, the stereotypes associated with them, or children's qualifications as defined by prior experience. This prior experience has to do with an activity, personality and behavioral traits that might be disruptive for group functioning and conformity to conventions as defined by group identity or social consensus. Research has documented the presence of a transition occurring at the reasoning level behind the criteria of inclusion and exclusion from childhood to adolescence (Horn 2003). As children get older, they become more attuned to issues of group functioning and conventions and weigh them up in congruence with issues of fairness and morality (Killen and Stangor 2001).

8.2.3 The Role of Social Interactions in Moral Development

Children’s interactions with caregivers and peers have been shown to influence development of moral understanding and behavior. Researchers have addressed the influence of interpersonal interactions on children’s moral development from two primary perspectives: socialization/internalization (Grusec and Goodnow 1994; Kochanska and Askan 1995) and social domain theory.

Research from the social domain theory perspective focuses on how children actively distinguish moral from conventional behavior, as they learn what is expected from them through responses of their parents, teachers, and peers. Social domain theory suggests that there are different areas of reasoning co-existing in development that include societal, moral, and psychological perspectives. Adults tend to respond to children’s moral transgressions (e.g., hitting or stealing) by drawing the child’s attention to the effect of his or her action on others, and doing so consistently across various contexts. In contrast, adults are more likely to respond to children’s conventional misdeeds (e.g., eating with their hands) by reminding children about specific rules and doing so only in certain contexts (e.g., at school but not at home). Peers respond mainly to moral but not to conventional transgressions and demonstrate emotional distress (e.g., crying or yelling) when they are the victim of (or bystanders with respect to) moral transgressions.

8.2.4 The Relevance of Advances in Research on Moral Development in Moral Education

This short review on research on moral development stresses the importance of discussion and dialogue/argumentation, of value-education and of rich social settings. Experiences during which emotions can be discussed, reflected and internalized towards the identification of moral values susceptible to lead to advancement in moral judgment. Educational research in this domain is badly missing although some effort has been invested in this direction (c.f. Patry et al. 2008). To this end, a relatively long-term intervention, enabling reflection and internalization, is needed.

8.3 Moral Education, Moral Development and Dialogicity

8.3.1 The Ethical Justification of Programs in Moral Education: The Dialogical Ethics Approach

Moral education and the development of values imply a prior philosophical notion of morality and understanding what “good” means, a notion which is not obvious at all and in fact is highly contested in contemporary thought. Plato (2013) based the validation of ethical notions on the objective knowing of ideal goodness that is given in ideal knowledge coming from high-level philosophical reflection. Naturally, this is an aristocratic understanding of moral judgment, which accordingly justifies an aristocratic polis ruled by a philosopher-king. In modern thinking, Kant (2015) replaces Plato’s objective knowledge with a transcendental rationality which is the condition of all experience. Kantian ethics draws on a ‘categorical imperative’ for morality which is based on generalization and abstraction: judging my actions whether they are ethical and moral when generalized to all situations. This Kantian morality of rationality is criticized by Nietzsche (1966) as a disguise for actual power-relations between people. Nietzsche sees values as human acts of power and creation in which we create ourselves, making the only possible ethical education, one that empowers pupils’ ability to create their own values.

In the twentieth century these Nietzschian critiques were developed in the postmodern school, emphasizing the highly constituted nature of what we understand as knowledge and morality (Bauman 1988; Foucault 1972). Universal ethical notions are specifically criticized from the standpoint of modern anthropology, which reveals the highly contingent nature of ethical norms (Marcus and Fisher 1986). Many anthropologists argue that moral values cannot be separated from their cultural sources and background, making universal morality non-existent and implying moral relativism. This line of thought sees ethical universality as a western justification for colonial and imperial actions, giving priority to western values as universal over different moral-cultural values.

Despite the apparent contradiction, values can be regarded as both universal and culture-specific, such as in the case of Politeness theory (Brown and Levinson 1987), introduced as a universal, as is evident by the mere title of this seminal work: Politeness: Some universals in language usage. The notion of politeness, researched from a variety of perspectives (interactionist linguistics, anthropology and developmental psychology, to name just a few) refers to interactants’ efforts to facilitate/enable communication by mitigating affronts to each other’s face (Goffman 1967). The theory has been critiqued for its claim to universality, and yet politeness still constitutes a universal value (Scollon and Scollon 1995; Morand 1996), crucial to human interaction, and particularly cross-culturally, despite—or rather precisely because of—the fact that specific norms and values of politeness differ between cultures (Armaşu 2012). Although the expression of a certain value might vary from culture to culture, the value itself might still be upheld as unitary.

In our research we suggest following a different kind of moral thinking in response to the challenges of moral relativism, a conception which is also inherent to the pedagogic practice we use—dialogical ethics. The ethics of dialogue, viewing dialogue as a primary ethical moment, represent a principle of morality enabling humans to co-create meaning. Dialogical ethics are not weakened by the constituted nature of truth and values, nor by the cultural relativism of morality. This notion of deep différance (Derrida 1973) is the starting point for dialogical ethics, which embraces this meaning-making and meaning-constituting nature of man as not denying ethical views, but rather commanding them. Lévinas (1969) argues that the unexhausted ‘otherness of the other’ is the basis of all morality, which has ‘priority’ over any ontology or knowledge we have of the world. This view does not see morality as a result of any kind of understanding or knowledge, cultural or universal, it is a basic intention which is a kind of ‘borderline’ to our own knowing. A human is a meaning-making being and a valuing creature. However, this act is not only personal, rather it is always shared and intertwined with others who disagree, approve, acknowledge or not this personal valuing. Dialogical ethics could be understood as the actual term that makes this dialectic of personal/collective meaning-making and valuing, which we call ‘dialogue’, at its best. Dialogical ethical values are therefore intentions and norms that increase the inclusiveness, fertility and ‘meeting of otherness’ in the intersubjective, transcultural human process of meaning-making.

In the framework of DIALLS there are certain values we wish to instill. This approach creates a mini-culture within a classroom meant to construct something new. Mutual respect, indeed, is not a universal principle: it depends on what you do, and on what you are habituated to.

8.3.2 An Interventional Educational Program on Moral Development

The CLLP (cultural literacy learning programme—see Chapter 1) is a mid-term program that spreads over a sequence of activities during several months through 15 lessons designed for 3 age-groups. It enables us to examine temporal development which we intend to analyze according to the microgenetic sequential approach.

Similar projects dealing with education and values have been conducted. To mention two such projects: REACH Beyond Tolerance (Hollingsworth et al. 2003) and VaKE—Values and Knowledge Education (Patry et al. 2008). REACH is a long-term wide scope USA-based program that promotes cultural-pluralism and tolerance. This program relies on long-term overall influence, and it uses a great variety of activities, not only dialogue/argumentation. VaKE is closer in nature to DIALLS. It follows a constructive approach via dilemma discussions, following Kohlberg’s claim the values should be implemented not through content-instruction but rather through arguing about those values. The instructors present moral dilemma stories and ask the children to decide what to do and why. The influence on children’s moral thinking, it is claimed, is certain though it will take weeks and months to be discerned. VaKE’s declared uniqueness is in its focus on the why aspect: the knowledge accompanying the children’s choices and arguments. The program takes the students through a repeating process of reflection and decision and sends them to get the information needed to justify or refute their decisions. The DIALLS program, on the other hand, uses wordless works (videos and picture-books) stimuli for the discussion (see Chapter 5). There is no dilemma handed to the children, but rather it is supposed to emerge from their discussion. Though the teacher can operate as a guide, s/he does not play the role of an instructor leading the children to the “right” discussion topic or answer. DIALLS is based on minimal guidance, and nurtures open dialogue between children. The interaction itself is the goal, rather than the means.

Hence, our work will focus on moral development via an interventional program intended to boost dialogic dimensions both in peer interactions and in teacher-students interactions.

The DIALLS program, adapted to different ages and cultures, was implemented in seven countries (cf. Chapter 1—Introduction to this volume). It focuses on certain values seen as universal—or at least, European—values (tolerance, empathy, inclusion). As discussed above (2.1; 3.1) perceiving certain values as universal might present a problem as values, in many cases, are culture-bound (i.e. justice, rights). We would like to maintain that in speaking of universality we do not mean universality of the nature of the values. We see the core values of DIALLS as universal; nonetheless, we do not expect their expression/interpretation to be identical within different cultures. The participating countries (UK, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Israel) are not geographically far apart, and could be defined as ‘western’, yet they are quite dissimilar from each other culture-wise. This aspect of the program will enable us to discuss and analyze the question of the universality of values, though admittedly in a somewhat limited way.

The program was designed as a three-tier project of expanding peer-circles: starting in the inner-circle of face-to-face interaction with classmates (LP1-5); moving on to the wider circle of synchronous computer-mediated interaction with intra-country peers (LP6-10); ending with asynchronous computer mediated interaction with inter-country peers (LP11-15) (for more details regarding the DIALLS online platform see Chapter 7). This design would have enabled us to compare value-learning both intra-culturally and inter-culturally. Due to COVID19 the third tier was not implemented as schools worldwide closed down. Nevertheless, we will be able to analyze EoD/DoE both within different countries, and to compare the results through an inter-cultural comparable corpus. We hope this comparison will allow us to gain some insights regarding the question of morality and universality.

8.4 A Microgenetic Approach to Analysis

8.4.1 DIALLS Key Values in Interaction

As was discussed above, research on the psychology of moral development has elaborated categories of students’ understanding of moral questions or dilemmas, largely on the basis of interview and questionnaire data. There also exists a relatively restricted research literature on the evolution of children’s moral reasoning in peer-interactions, inspired by the work of Baldwin (1906) and within a Vygotskian perspective. For example, Damon and Killen (1982) studied small group interactions with respect to a distributive justice problem, relating students’ progress to ‘patterns’ in their discourse. Children who engaged in rejecting, conflictual discourse tended not to progress; higher levels of progress were associated with more varied types of discourse. We also discussed philosophical theories of dialogue, that insist on the ethical dimension of shared meaning-making. However, although such theories are the foundations of a prescriptive “dialogic pedagogy” (Wegerif 2020), they have not yet given rise to precise methods for analyzing ethical relations between children engaged in small-group interactions. With this in mind, we have two main aims here: firstly, to outline an approach analyzing the “ethics of dialogue” between children engaged in school tasks, and secondly, to study how this relates to children’s ethical judgements and conceptions (Sect. 8.4.2).

The detailed analysis of the hic et nunc processes of co-elaboration of students’ ideas on moral issues in specific dialogues can provide situated accounts of their moral thinking and pave the way for the study of its development across longer timescales. Within the framework of the DIALLS project, we take as reference points students’ understandings (“conceptions”) of three ethical concepts: tolerance, empathy and inclusion (Lähdesmäki et al. 2020). However, given that their definitions are largely stipulative, in official EU texts, understanding how they are in play in real interactions requires significant work in order to render them operational.

These research aims—understanding the relations between ethics in and of dialogue—need to be situated within the framework of the specific task that students are engaged in, within DIALLS teaching/learning situations, given that its structure is a major determinant of the structure of (epistemic) dialogue (Grosz and Sidner 1986). Here, the task involves elaborating a narrative on the basis of ‘wordless texts’ under teacher guidance, in a way that is oriented towards the emergence of ethical questions and constructive discussion in relation to them. In the next section we will delineate our proposed methodology for operationalizing this analysis.

8.4.2 DoE/EoD Dimensions and Indicators

Our proposed methodological framework comprises the main dimensions and indicators detailed in the following sub-sections and illustrated in Fig. 8.1. Each dimension and indicator presented will be followed by a brief transcript excerpt demonstrating our analysis methodology. All excerpts were taken from a group discussion carried out in Israel, involving a group of primary-school students discussing a wordless text. Examples were translated from Hebrew to English by the first author. The wordless text, Papa’s Boy, is an animated short video (3:03 min) about a young boy-mouse who wants to become a ballet dancer as illustrated by his ballet costume. This goes against his father’s expectations: he wanted his son to follow his footsteps and become a boxer. The father is disappointed with his son’s decision until an unexpected event: a cat tried to attack their family. The boy-mouse saves his family by dancing and distracting the cat.

Fig. 8.1
figure 1

Analysis approach: ethics in/of dialogue

Full size image

8.4.2.1 Dialogue on Ethics (DoE)

The first dimension is interpretation: reconstructing causality between events and attributing beliefs, desires and intentions to characters:

S4::

“[…] in the beginning of the movie, the dad of the, boy mouse he didn’t want him to dance, in the second part of the movie there was a cat who came to eat up his dad, and then eh the mouse saved him and then he thought it was really good that the mouse will dance”.

S4 reconstructs the events and actions of the story and assigns attributes and intentions to the characters.

The second dimension involves a move from focusing on the narrative towards personal positioning and moral judgement:

S1::

“Yes, I know but I think you've got, like, a whole world ahead of you. You can’t just do girly stuff.”

S1 makes a moral judgement about the young mouse’s decision to become a ballerina.

The third dimension, conceptualization, underlies the two others. This can take two forms: (1) conceptualization underlying judgement (and interpretation), not expressed explicitly; (2) explicit discussion of moral concepts:

S32::

“I wanna say it but there are colors that I really really, but really love, that are girls’ colors like pink, violet”.

S32 shares his personal preference implicitly conceptualizing his view on being tolerant, establishing an analogy between color preferences and gender.

In dialogue, students are likely to move freely between interpreting the story, making personal judgements and engaging in conceptual thinking. To summarize, students can reveal their concepts of moral issues in the judgements they make, in their explicit discussion of these concepts and also in the manner in which they interpret the story in the first place.

8.4.2.2 Ethics of dialogue (EoD)

Turning to the ethics of how students relate to each other, we study this through the prism of the DIALLS key moral concepts (tolerance, empathy, inclusion). In order to operationalize these concepts in interaction analysis, we restrict their definitions to particular intersubjective ‘planes’—the different planes are not exclusive but may combine—and define sets of indicators for both the positive and negative facet of each moral value:

We operationalize (in)tolerance on the plane of ideas. Accordingly, example indicators are acceptance of others’ diverging ideas (tolerance), or else rejecting them out of hand (intolerance).

S3::

“I think that I differ in opinion from S1, because I think that, the father saw that the mouse-boy’s ballet is like, it’s like eh, it’s like, kind of boxing […]”

S3 manifests tolerant behavior towards what another student said, though the things said go against his beliefs.

S113::

“did you write an example too?”

S114::

“no”

S115::

“I’m not supposed to write an example, leave me alone!”

S113 asks a question, S114 gives a negative answer to S113; S115 reacts in an intolerant manner.

We operationalize empathy/antipathy on the plane of emotions. Accordingly, indicators might be regulating negative group emotions or rather showing positive support (we prefer to categorize “cognitive empathy” as a form of inclusion of the other in dialogue).

S1::

“[…] you are not so right because at the end you said ehm, eh, that- never mind. It’s just ehm I think that, that the dad’s right”.

S1 disagrees with another student’s opinion but introduces her disagreement in an empathetic way.

S122::

I have no place to write

S121::

Do I care?

S122 informs S121 that he does not have enough space to write the assignment. S121 shows lack of empathy in her reaction.

We operationalize inclusion/exclusion in terms of interactive participation. Accordingly, indicators might be including/excluding others’ interventions, transactivity in building on others’ ideas.

S8::

“I think that what you say is wrong because, any boy can do whatever a girl can do and any girl can play whatever a boy does”.

S8 includes what another student has just said, despite her disagreement with the student’s statement.

S6::

“So, wait! And then at the end, the son showed him that he can dance ballet”.

S6 blocks another student’s willingness to participate in the discussion who seems to want to take the floor.

The main elements of our analytic approach are summarized in Fig. 8.1.

8.4.3 DoE/EoD Interrelation and Prospect

The example excerpts presented in Sect. 8.4.2, taken from a single classroom interaction, illustrate our general analytical approach. However, they provide slender information for deepening our research question regarding the interrelation between DoE/EoD (represented in Fig. 8.1 by the question mark at the top), with the exception of student S1.

Student S1 had made the moral judgement that the boy mouse could not do only “girly stuff”, which could be considered as intolerant. Note that she does not say that he should not do that at all, but rather, “not only”, which could be considered a type of hybrid or partial (in)tolerance. However, in her relations to another student, S1 expresses disagreement, but in an empathetic way. It is interesting to speculate on this example: how can we reconcile both (partial) intolerance towards a fictional character, yet empathy towards other students? Might not someone who shows intolerance in a fictional case try to attenuate possible negative judgement from others, by being empathetic with them? This is an example of the types of questions that we hope our methodology will enable us to raise and, following analysis, solve.

Finally, it may be of interest to shift the notion of ethics of dialogue from the inter-individual level to that of the group per se. In that case, we could study the relations between shared moral judgements and the overall ‘ethical climate’ of the group.

8.5 Discussion and Conclusions

This chapter explores moral development amongst children and the ways it has been conceptualized, studies and analyzed over time. Moral development through social interaction has been given little attention in research, and when it has been addressed, it focused mostly on parent–child interaction, to the detriment of the quality of peer-interactions. Our work involves new interventional settings that trace moral development in dialogue. Additionally, the DIALLS program addresses three levels of interaction: whole-class teacher-mediated; small-group teacher-mediated; small-group unmediated. This scaling produces very rich and diverse interaction data. So far, we have analyzed three lesson transcripts and drawn initial conclusions. For example, the data analyzed indicates that the mediator’s role bears great influence on the students’ behavior, revealing their understanding of what is expected of them. In future work we expect to present deeper and more diverse data analysis.

DIALLS also includes adaptation of the materials to three age-groups: young children, pre-adolescents and adolescents. A wider analysis of the data will allow us to examine differences in understanding, execution and application of EoD/DoE at different ages.

Our methodological approach concerns both aspects DoE/EoD and relates to conduct reflected in dialogue. Whereas in past research actual behavior and development of conceptions of morals were considered separately, our methodology studies relations between them. We focus on interaction in the context of moral development, this being an aspect which was not extensively discussed within the dialogic education approach. We hope that our theoretical approach and methodology will provide us with a way to see and understand the way development occurs, what kinds of values and ethics are discussed and performed by speakers.

In the framework of past research children were presented with a moral dilemma and asked to solve it. Researchers strived to understand children’s morality through their answers to questions defined by adults rather than children themselves. This methodology was not process-oriented: how could they understand development by examining its result? Following a microgenetic approach to analysis and applying it to the DIALLS data, we are looking for the ethical dimension within a dialogue. This analysis approach might enable us to deal with another bias than the androcentric one pointed out by Gilligan (1977, see §2). Gilligan critiqued Kohlberg for asking females the same questions as males and expecting the same manner and character of morality in their answers: similarly biased is the adult-centered approach, seeing children’s answers and results through the lens of those that an adult might come up with. Presenting a child with a problem that an adult sees as moral and having a certain solution is a problematic approach. There is a qualitative difference between a child’s solution and that of an adult. In DIALLS the children are not presented with a moral dilemma, they carve it out of the texts themselves, albeit under teacher guidance in many cases, defining what is a moral dilemma themselves, which they are not asked to solve, but rather to engage in a rich discussion with respect to it. Thus, we do not judge children’s answers because there is no pre-defined question. Rather, we analyze the way they interact around the narrative (interpreting it, judging it and conceptualizing it—DoE) and amongst themselves (EoD). The DIALLS settings and the methodology we promulgate opens the door for research on moral development as the development of dialogue among children on ethics, and of the ethics of dialogue.