Moral Codes and Educational Goals of German and Indonesian Preschool Teachers

According to the cultural-developmental approach, the significance of the three moral codes Autonomy, Community and Divinity proposed by Shweder and collegues (1997) varies across both cultures and life span. Previous research has shown that members of so-called WEIRD cultures prefer Autonomy as a moral cultural model, while Community is highly important in traditional countries and Divinity is especially significant in south-eastern cultures. Given that cultural models provide a framework for shaping educational goals (Keller et al., 2006), we expected preschool teachers to pursue related moral educational goals for their preschool children. To examine this relationship cross-culturally, that is, between the moral cultural model and the educational goals, 211 preschool teachers of religious und non-religious day-care centers in the urban area of Germany and Indonesia were asked to complete the Community, Autonomy, and Divinity Scale (Guerra & Giner-Sorolla, 2010) and the Ethical Values Assessment (Padilla-Walker & Jensen, 2016). The initial results confirmed only in part the proposed distribution of moral cultural models and educational goals in both countries, whereas a strong correlation between the cultural model and the educational goals for each country could be found. In Germany, Autonomy was considered the most important, while in Indonesia, Divinity was significantly more important than Community and Autonomy. Surprisingly, Indonesian preschool teachers also indicated Autonomy as more important than Community. These results highlight the influence of within-culture variations like urban vs. rural contexts on both the cultural model and the educational goals. Further results will be discussed before the cultural-developmental approach.