Thoughts on the rules of democratic and autocratic classes

Abstract

This article, which is based on the constructivist theory, is a study about the process of construction and validation of rules in classes of public elementary schools. It is a result of a doctoral research that investigated whether the school environment influences the way how students relate to each other and solve their interpersonal conflicts. Two school teachers were selected for this case study. Both of them assured that they wanted to foster the development of autonomous individuals, but they offered completely different socio-moral classroom environments, rules of different qualities and different strategies to make the students comply with them. Coercive relations were observed in one of the classroom environments, while democratic or cooperative ties were noticed in the other one. Considering that the process applied for constructing and validating norms interferes with the students’ interaction and their socio-affective development by sending messages regarding morality, this article discusses some situations that were observed in the classrooms. They concern both the construction of rules and the procedures used to make the children follow them. It analyzes their consequences on the students’ moral development. The results that were found and qualitatively analyzed indicate that although the teachers have a common purpose, the process used in autocratic classes favored the maintenance of high levels of heteronomy in students, while the procedures in democratic classes contributed more effectively to the development of autonomy.

Key words: rules, moral development, constructivism (education), teachers and students – relations.