Soaring: From Literature to Leadership

By Dr. Barbara Yeager

Soaring: From Literature to Leadership is the result of research in developmental psychology, socialization theory, years of teaching childrens and adolescent literature and the awareness that moral judgment development takes place in the classroom as well as in the home. Dr. Yeager has devised five research-based activities which can be applied to any piece of literature, Merging the literature with the five activities provides the opportunity for movement toward moral maturity and, reserch tells us, leadership among peers. The Soaring Program presented here includes fables, fairy tales, and seven novels. It is meant to be used in classrooms and/or at home. It is hoped that teachers and parents will follow the examples and create additional resources for advanement of moral judgment by merging the five activities with literature they love. Copies of all handouts in the book are available free upon request from [e-mail]

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481738460

Dr. Barbara Yeager

Dr. Barbara Yeager taught language and literature to undergraduate and graduate students for over fifty years.She enjoyed her research on the findings of Kohlberg regarding the development of moral judgment in children. As she and her husband Jack raised their five children, they were always interested in encouraging moral maturity in the family. The five are now happy and successful adults while Jack and Barbara are retired. They are now encouraging the growth and development of thier grandchildren. From research, reading, and the recognition that the Soaring Program can have a positive influence on the lives of children, parents, and teachers, this publication was born.

Book preview

Soaring

FROM LITERATURE TO LEADERSHIP

Dr. Barbara Yeager

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2013 Dr. Barbara Yeager. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/18/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-3846-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Note:

To obtain a folder of all handouts used in the Soaring Program,

Email [e-mail]. The materials will be sent to the address you provide as a Word document suitable for download and duplication.

CONTENTS

Soaring

The Program

The Literature

The Fable

The Shepherd’s Boy

The Cricket and the Ant

The Fairy Tale

Whippety Stourie, Tom Tit Tot and Rumpelstiltzkin.

Animal Stories

Rabbit Hill

Charlotte’s Web

Realism

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Minority Group Fiction

Sounder

Historical Fiction-Fictionalized History

Carry On Mr. Bowditch

Science Fiction

Wrinkle in Time

Symbolism

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Appendix A

Dedication

This publication is dedicated to the loves of my life… my Valentines… who give life meaning and joy. It is you who have influenced Soaring and for whom it is written. May this effort enhance your lives and the lives of those who surround you. Thanks!

Soaring

Soaring is a research-based program designed to release the leadership potential in children by stimulating and challenging their thinking. Soaring builds reading, discussion, decision making, writing, and communication skills. It develops insight and encourages creativity. These are, however, not the most interesting outcomes of this program. Soaring stimulates students to more mature levels of moral reasoning. Those students will become our leaders.

Research on peer group centrality shows that we humans prefer to be associated with those whose moral decision making skills are more mature than our own. Research and experience tells us that, as adults, we find those people with mature judgment rising to take leadership roles.

Every good parent and every great teacher has a dream and a prayer for the students in their care. Help me guide them so they may reach their potential. Perhaps the greatest gift of our creation is our potential. The child, as does each of us, has the freedom of will to choose whether or not to try to reach fulfilled potential. As parents and as teachers, our role is to inspire the child to fulfillment and to create an environment in which he/she can grow and flourish.

What if you could help children develop their potential for moral decision making. What if you could do this simply by creating an atmosphere in your home or in your classroom which would help actuate our innate sense of justice and what if that environment led to advanced or more mature moral decision making. Try Soaring.

Soaring is a literature-based program designed to help children reach their potential as just and responsible decision makers. By creating and supervising five exercises focused on a dilemma from any piece of literature the parent and/or the teacher can learn to structure an environment which will move the student from immature moral decisions to higher levels of judgment. Soaring can create leaders.

The Program

Lawrence Kohlberg has proposed a theory of moral development which has received wide recognition from other developmental psychologists and from educators. The following program associates the Kohlberg theory of moral development and the genre of children’s literature.

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development has its origin in developmental psychology. According to this theory, cognitive development is a result of the individual’s interaction with his/her environment. The advocates of this psychological theory contend that when this interaction involves a new experience, the individual is called upon to adjust to this experience. When the individual adjusts to the experience, development takes place. A state of equilibrium or stability then exists in these individuals. They now approach their environment in a more advanced state of development than they enjoyed before they encountered the new experience.

Development is stimulated by contact with an environment that sets up a conflict in the individual’s current way of looking at his environment. As the individual adjusts to this new and conflicting notion or experience, growth or development occurs. This development, according to the theory, may be observed in stages. In other words, there are qualitatively different ways of viewing the environment and of solving problems. These different modes of thought form an invariant sequence of stages through which each individual moves. Cultural factors may speed or slow or stop this movement through the stages, but they do not affect the sequence.

These are the basic assumptions that Kohlberg accepted from Piaget and the other developmental theorists. Along with these ideas, Kohlberg accepted four additional assumptions regarding cognitive development which pertain to social development. First, he assumes that social development takes place in a fashion similar to cognitive development. Second, there is a fundamental unity of personality and development termed ego or the self. Social development is, in essence, the restructuring of the (a) concept of self, (b) in its relationship to concepts of other people, and (c) conceived as being in a common social world with social standards. Third, the same process that takes place in the cognitive domain of man likewise takes place in the social realm. This social development involves role-taking, i.e. an awareness that the other is in some way like the self and that the other knows or is responsive to the self in a system of complementary expectations. Therefore, developmental changes in the social-self reflect parallel changes in the individual’s concept of the social world. And finally, the direction of social or ego development is also toward an equilibrium or reciprocity between the self’s actions and those of others toward the self. In its generalized form, this equilibrium is the end point or definer of morality. It is conceived as involving principles of justice, reciprocity, or equality.

Having accepted the above assumptions of cognitive developmentalists regarding cognitive and social development, Kohlberg focused his research on moral development as one of several strains of social development. Because moral development is an aspect of social development, he expected to find the assumptions of cognitive developmental theory operative in the realm of moral development. It also seemed likely that stages of moral development would be identified, and that these stages would represent qualitative differences in ways of looking at moral decisions. Kohlberg’s research confirmed his assumptions regarding cognitive developmental theory, and he was also able to identify stages of moral development as he had anticipated.(See Appendix A)

Kolhberg’s findings become important for the home and for the classroom teacher because they indicate that moral development takes place as a result of man’s interaction with his environment as he encounters new experiences. The home and classroom then become potential sources of moral development because students experience environmental interaction there. The parent or classroom teacher may be unaware of the spontaneous development which is taking place. This lack of awareness may slow or stop the moral development which is potentially within each individual. On the other hand, a home or classroom which is structured to stimulate moral reasoning may aid or speed this moral development. An appropriately structured environment in the school system would serve to stimulate the natural development of students rather than leave this development to chance.

Because Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is a theoretical approach to the nature of human development, it does not provide a body of knowledge to be conveyed by the parent or teacher. It is, rather, theory which offers information to