Determinants of the selection of moral role-models in junior grade students

Abstract

The selection of moral role-models belongs to theoretical and methodological issues that are still not theoretically designed and empirically studied. In the theoretical sphere, the basic notions are not precisely defined, and there are various semantic interpretations of these notions in literature. This especially refers to moral examples, moral role-models, and moral ideals. With regard to methodological literature, there are few papers on the identification of moral role-models, their characteristics, and their connection with personal characteristics and specificities of socio-cultural environments. This paper features the presentation of certain theoretical problems and results of empirical study of the determinants of the selection of moral role-models in junior grade primary school students. In the theoretical section of the paper, the issue of subtlety of the process of forming moral role-models is discussed, whereas the empirical study section introduces the statistical findings on the determinants of moral role-models (gender, age, success at school, parents’ marital status,  parents’ employment status, place of residence).