Moral affective performance

Apart from having the moral intellectual qualities, one should feel the need and desire to perform the morally right conduct; and the emotional moral life include conscience, self-respect and control, empathy, loving the good and humility (Lickona, 1991, 1993, 2001). The moral affective qualities, particularly empathy, conscience and humility seemed to be observed from the role-playing and the student participants’ individual self-reflection processes.

6.2.1. Empathy

Role-playing is a highly involving and enjoyable strategy that enables the students to go beyond the cognitive aspect to engage the affective dimension, by playing the role of the character to think, feel and react as how the character would possibly do, fostering the students’ sense of empathy (Cooper, Burman, Ling, Razdevsek-Pucko & Stephenson, 1998;

Day 2002; Lickona, 1991; Lockwood, 2009, Vitz, 1990). The photographs used in the student participants’ storyboards were evidences which could illustrate the extent of the student participants’ affective involvement and seriousness in character roles that they assumed. The images illustrated their attempts and efforts to express the character’s thoughts, feelings or reactions as convincing as possible in order to elucidate the implicit messages in the still images.

As observed from the groups’ storyboards, the story characters’ feelings, thoughts, and needs were mainly elicited through the facial expressions, gestures in the still images instead of via the story script. Among the four groups, only Group 2 could most clearly present the emotions of the story characters in their story. The storyboarding process could engage the student participants cognitively and emotionally as they pieced up the fragments of thoughts into a coherent story structure, accompanied with the selected still images that add a layer of

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implicit meaning to the story (Lambert, 2010). Both the quality of the role-played scene images and the story script complement and supplement each other to form the story content.

In the excerpts (see Figure 24), besides the convincing facial expressions and body languages, the group had used sign boards drawn with emoticons and words of speech to reinforce the emotional messages. In the story script, the group had also mentioned emotion words like

“crying”, “upset”, “laughing loudly”, “shocked” and “angry”, to further emphasise the emotional effects. The group’s storyboard demonstrated the extent that the group had attempted to immerse in the roles to view their perspectives and empathise with the characters.

In Figure 24, to safeguard the privacy and interests of the student participants, their facial expressions in the images were replaced with smiley faces.

Figure 24. Excerpts of Group 2’s storyboard.

As photographs and not video were taken, the student participants could not act out the play with open dialogues, but would have to use their creativity to demonstrate the characters’

thoughts, feelings and behaviours with the use of facial expressions, hand gestures and sign boards. Thus, instead of an interactive role-playing process, the student participants appeared to be involved in a silent film screen shooting process. In addition, as the role-play was not

Then the bully started laughing loudly while the girl was crying.

Her angry parent scolded her and made her return the wig to her now!

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scripted, the student participants were instructed to refer to their mind-maps to act out the fragments of role-play scenes. On one hand, the restrictions might spark the creativity of the student participants to produce convincing still images that elicit the unspoken meaning in the images; on the other hand, they might hinder the student participants from fully immerse in the roles, thinking, feeling, behaving like the characters, and interacting with the other characters so as to completely act out a play. Consequently, this might reduce the impact of the role-playing method in triggering the student participants’ emotional aspect of moral life.

6.2.2. Conscience and humility

In the digital reflection stories, the student participants were expected to self-report their reflection as honestly as possible and the reflection process involved the student participants’ conscience to feel the obligation to act accordingly to produce their own truthful responses. During the self-reflection process, the student participants would have to recall and re-evaluate their past behaviours against their acquired understanding of “considerate” to reflect if they were a considerate person. In self-evaluating and self-reflecting their value systems, the student participants on the average seemed to be more than proficient (M=3.15, SD=.48) in their moral self-reflection ability, demonstrating their self-understanding, humility and conscience moral qualities (see appendix 20).

Fifteen out of the twenty student participants had expressed themselves as a considerate person at times, and five student participants affirmed that they were considerate.

This may indicate that while the student participants had positive self-regard and valued themselves as a considerate person, most of them also recognised there would be times they did not behave as a considerate person. The student participants’ responses may also show their self-knowledge of their own characters. While undeniably recognising their flaws, fourteen student participants further expressed the need to improve themselves, openly

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showing their willingness and desire to seek improvement to become a more considerate person. This reflected the humility quality the student participants may possess. Instead of focusing on self, G1S4, G2S4 and G4S5 extended their understanding to the general population, perceiving that everyone should possess the virtue of considerate for the general good of the public. Their opinions may reflect their emotional attachment to being a considerate person and their love for the good.

Everyone should be considerate otherwise everyone will be proud with no manners.

(G1DS_G1S4)

I want to be more considerate and I will do my best. Everyone should be considerate otherwise people need help nobody will help us. (G2DS_G2S4)

Everyone should be considerate otherwise the world will be sad. (G4DS_G4S5)

Besides eliciting the student participants’ desire to self-improve, having them to contemplate the methods would prompt them to put their emotional obligations into actions.

In providing the ways to self-improve, the student participants’ responses could be broadly categorised into three. The responses of the student participants imply that they may have developed a less egocentric mentality to become more considerate to others. The first category consisted of student participants who had relooked at their definitions of “considerate” to determine the aspects they would like improve on.

Think about other’s feeling, religion etc. (G1DS_G1S1)

Respect people, think of their feeling and religion and their culture. (G1DS_G1S2) I can try to be more understanding to feel how other feel in a situation. (G2DS_G2S5)

The second category included student participants who chose to render help to people in need to train themselves to become more considerate. These student participants might

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have associated “considerate” with “kindness” and viewed the helping of the surrounding people in need as a way to display their considerate behaviours.

By helping people around me and think about other people’s feeling. (G2DS_G2S2)

I can be a better person by helping the people who need help and help them by letting them sit or help them carrying heavy things. (G2DS_G2S4)

Helping those who need help like helping people who really need help to cross the road.

(G3DS_G3S3)

The final category of student participants had stated specified examples in which they wished to perform. The examples they mentioned may reflect the inconsiderate behaviours they had performed in the past, and they would like to correct the past undesirable behaviours into desirable ones.

I should let old, pregnant and young children to sit on buses and MRT. (G1DS_G1S4) Pay attention in class and do not interrupt people. (G3DS_G3S2)

By helping my parents to do housework. (G4DS_G4S3)