Effectiveness of philosophy education on the development of moral judgment, prosocial behavior and anger control in the students in Ahwaz city

The aim of the present study was to determine effectiveness of teaching philosophy for children (P4C) on the growth of moral judgment, prosocial behavior and inhibition of anger in Ahwaz city students. The research method was pre-test, post-test with control group, and follow-up. The participants of the study consisted of all second-grade secondary school students in Ahwaz city in the academic year of 2016-2017. Using multi-stage cluster random sampling, 40 students were selected from 160 students and randomly were assigned into experiments (n=20) and control (n=20) groups. The experimental group was subjected to teaching philosophy for children for 2 months (10 sessions, once a week for 90 minutes) and the control group did not receive any intervention, after the post-test program and one and a half months after the intervention, a follow-up phase was performed. The tools used for data, Lotf Abadi's Moral Development Questionnaire (2007), Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire of Carole et al. (2003) and Eysenck & Wilson's aggression questionnaire (1975). Data analysis was using multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA) and ANCOVA single-variable. The results showed that the teaching of philosophy affects the moral judgment development، prosocial behavior and anger control in students, and this result was persistent during the follow up phase (p<0.001). The teaching of philosophy increased the power of moral judgment in children, in addition, improved communication, social responsibility and anger control.