RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COGNITIVE LEVELS, MORAL REASONING AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to assess relationship between cognitive levels, moral reasoning and academic achievement of the secondary school students. The objectives of the study were; 1) To find out cognitive development level of the students; 2) To determine moral reasoning level of the students; 3) To measure students’ academic achievement on the moral contents they studied; 4) To analyse comparative effectiveness of English and Urdu medium institutions in terms students’ cognitive development, moral reasoning and academic achievement, and; 4) To explore relationship between cognitive development, moral reasoning and academic achievement of the students. The population of the study was secondary level students studying in the FGBEIs of ICT. The sample of the study was selected from the 20 educational institutions, 10 each from English and Urdu medium institutions. The study addressed 10 research questions. The data were collected on the three variables by using three research instruments. The Science Reasoning Tasks were used to measure cognitive levels, a test based on moral dilemmas was constructed to determine moral reasoning levels and an achievement test based on moral contents was developed to assess moral knowledge levels of the grade 10 students. The given three instruments were administered on 600 respondents. The collected data were analysed by SPSS 15 version. According to the nature of the data and to address the research questions, different statistical techniques i.e. descriptive statistics, t-test, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, Spearman rho and Partial Correlation were applied. The major findings of the study are; 1. More than half of the grade 10 students were at Concrete Operations level and vii majority of them were at Good boy-Nice Girl Orientation moral reasoning level while most of the respondents were at outstanding level in moral knowledge. 2. The students studying in English medium institutions are better in cognitive development, moral reasoning and moral knowledge, than those studying in Urdu medium institutions. 3. The negligible relationship between cognitive development levels and moral reasoning of the secondary school students does not allow us to determine the moral reasoning level of the students. 4. The secondary level students’ identified cognitive levels allow us to predict to some extent students’ knowledge level. 5. The small correlation between moral reasoning and moral knowledge indicates that the secondary level students’ moral knowledge least influence their moral reasoning development.