Distributive justice: Development and learning in families, classrooms and cultures

The problems of fair distribution of resources occur inevitably in children’s lives and promoting their justice reasoning is one of crucial issues in moral education. Recent empirical research has shown that the sense of fairness is observable from early age and even young children are sensitive to social contexts when they are to make fair judgments. While children learn about fair sharing and develop the concept of distributive justice through myriad of social experiences in various contexts such as family and schools, and with influence of cultural values, more research is needed to better understand the complexity of the learning and development processes. In addition, the processes are more complex because fair sharing is concerned not only with distribution of benefit, such as rewards, but also with distribution of burdens, such as duties and work. However, research on the development of children__s fairness reasoning in different distribution contexts is also limited. In attempt to shed light on the problems, this panel presentation addresses the following issues by the presenters__ reporting their empirical and theoretical studies: (1) Children’s fairness reasoning concerning distribution of burdens as well as benefits, (2) The development of the concept of distributive justice in family and peer contexts, and (3) The influence of cultural values on children__s learning of distributive justice. As the implication from the studies, the question that the concept of distributive justice involves not only pursuing personal goals but also much to do with consideration for the benefit of others is also discussed.