Comparison of Moral Reasoning among Students with and without Visual Impairment

Some research has examined the moral reasoning and judgment in students with special needs and has shown that these students are lagging behind their non-disabled counterparts in term of moral development. Very few studies have been done in the area of development of moral reasoning in individuals with visual impairment; so given the research vacuum in this context, the present study was conducted to compare the moral reasoning between students with and without visual impairment.

The present study was a cross-sectional survey. The study sample included eighty 11 to 12- year- old male and female students studying at the public schools and schools for the blind in Tehran in 2017 (40 with visual impairment and 40 without visual impairment). The participants were selected by random cluster sampling, based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Defining Issues Test (DIT) for Moral Judgment (Rest, 1979) was used to collect the data. The collected data were analyzed by independent t-test and SPSS software.

The results showed that there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of moral reasoning; indicating that blind students had significant delays in moral reasoning compared to their sighted counterparts (p<0.05).

Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that visual impairment has a negative influence on ethical development, which in turn affects negatively the development of moral reasoning. However, it is noteworthy that the severity of the impairment and the age in which the blindness occurred, are very important in this regard. The implementations are discussed in the article.