Effectiveness of philosophy for children on moral competencies of high school girl students in Gorgan

This study determined the Effectiveness of ‘philosophy for children’ education on moral competences of high school girl students in Gorgan. The method of the study is semi-experimental by using pretest-posttest plot and control and experimental groups. The statistical population included all high school girl students in Gorgan in the academic year 2019-2020. The experimental and control groups were each assigned 30 students by random sampling. The experimental group attended twelve 90-min education sessions. Data collection was performed via the Moral Competency Inventory Measurement Instrument by Martin and Austin (2010). Validity and reliability of the tool were confirmed according to experts’ ideas and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (0.879), respectively. Data analysis was carried out through ANCOVA in SPSS (version 21). The results revealed that philosophy for education program has positive and significant effect on the students’ moral competences with the effect size of 0.911 (F=585.763; p<0.05). Furthermore, the findings of this study indicated the positive and significant effect of philosophy for education program on eight attributes of moral competences among the students. Therefore, it can be concluded that the use of indirect program such as philosophy for children can improve moral competences among students.