School: sociomoral conflicts and the construction of moral personalit

Abstract

This article presents reflections about the sociomoral conflicts and the kinds of violence present in the school environment. The information to this text was collected during the development of the research study “Moral personalities in construction: the sociomoral conflicts and feelings”. The research had as its objectives to investigate how early- elementary-grades school teachers would deal with situations of sociomoral conflict and with the feelings of those involved, in order to understand their repercussions in the construction of an autonomous moral personality of the students (PUIG, 1998). A case study (LÜDKE and ANDRÉ, 1986)was predicted in the methodology of the study, , with the implementation of semi-structured interviews with teachers and the observation of groups of students of those teachers. Fourteen early- elementary-grades teachers from public schools from four cities in Rio Grande do Sul were interviewed. Six of them in the city of Santa Maria, one in Faxinal do Soturno, four in Nova Palma and three in Roque González. The empirical research revealed a universe of data that indicated the existence of conflicts and violence both in the relationship student-student, and in the relationship teacher-student. The conflicts and violence observed were (mostly) due to a feeling of abstention of the interviewed teachers. Besides the gaps in the teachers' education, the ignorance of how to mediate conflicts and the misunderstandings of some situations of conflicts such as violence, the authoritarian practices of the teachers also contrast as an element that disadvantaged the construction of autonomous moral personality and the relation I-YOU (BUBER, 1977).