Chapter 18: Researching Social Agency and Morality: Theory and Practice for Working with Younger Children

Recently I completed an analysis of children and moral agency, drawing off research with children aged 9–11 years (Frankel, 2012). It opened a window into children’s lives that challenged the way we traditionally consider the relationship between children and morality as it moved away from the reliance on reason and aged based competence, to present the child as a social agent. These processes of agency showed children engaging constantly with morality as they sought to navigate their way through the complexities of everyday life. But, this work was limited. The findings focused on a specific group, of a certain age from the same school in a small town. As a result this work concludes that these findings must be seen as ‘just the beginning’ in building a body of work to further interrogate the application of this thesis. This chapter offers a platform, which will be used to present the case for expanding research on morality to children in early childhood (younger children), which for the purpose of this piece refers to children aged below eight years of age.