Formación de la conciencia moral en estudiantes de educación secundaria

Abstract

The Colombian educational system formally recognizes moral education as a transversal component that must permeate all areas of the school curriculum. However, in daily pedagogical practice there is a prioritization of conventional academic content, to the detriment of the moral formation of students. This dissociation between normative discourse and concrete educational action is manifested in the persistence of behaviors that show a weakened moral conscience: normalization of mockery, transgression of norms, deception or fraud. Given this scenario, the central objective of this research was to analyses the formation of moral awareness in secondary school adolescents through the use of moral dilemmas as a pedagogical strategy for decision-making based on universal principles. From a theoretical perspective, the study is based on the contributions of Lawrence Kohlberg (1958), who proposes a sequence of levels and stages in moral development; Carol Gilligan (1985), who emphasizes gender differences in moral judgement; Paulo Freire (1971), who conceives moral awareness as a collective construction strengthened through critical dialogue between peers; and the notion of being sentimental of Orlando Fals Borda (1985), which brings to the pedagogical strategy an integral dimension that unites reason and emotion in moral decision-making. These four theoretical pillars allow us to articulate astructural, differential and contextual understanding of moral development in adolescents. The state of the art shows the need for mixed methodological approaches to understand the formation of moral consciousness, integrating quantitative and qualitative tools. Under a pragmatic paradigm and a sequential explanatory design, this research developed a quantitative phase through a quasi-experiment with Pretest and Postest applying the DIT, to establish changes in the stages and moral levels after the implementation of a pedagogical strategy based on moral dilemmas. Subsequently, the qualitative phase incorporated interviews and interpretative analysis with students who showed significant transformations, allowing them to deepen the internal dynamics of their moral reasoning. The findings reflect positive impacts of the strategy with moral dilemmas, especially in the transition from conventional to post-conventional stages and levels. The student voices, collected during the interventions and in the qualitative phase, reveal that dilemmas activate reflection, the contrast of values and the critical resignification of positions in the face of everyday situations. The research confirms that moral dilemmas constitute an effective pedagogical strategy to strengthen moral awareness in adolescents and demonstrates the need to include them in the training practices of Institutional Educational Projects. Likewise, it is evident that moral education, when it is assumed in an intentional and situated way, affects not only individual reasoning, but also the construction of critical and supportive citizenship. In a country marked by inequality and corruption, this work represents an ethical and educational commitment that claims a priority place in public policy and teacher training, in order to contribute to a more just, democratic and humane society.