Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study explores the ways a small group of girls, ages 11-13, spoke about
courage over a two-year period. Using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a guide, the
purpose of the present study is to discover how courage is present in the lives of a select
group of girls, what their thoughts and perceptions are on courage, and how these
thoughts and perceptions explain the operation of emotion and rationality in producing
courage. This last question is based off Marcia Homiak's (1993) suggestion that
Aristotle offers a way to explain how emotion and rationality operate together to develop
positive, caring, independent and strong individuals.
Differing from the predominant framework of Carol Gilligan's theory of an "ethic of care" in girls' developmental research, the present study uses and suggests that the practice of returning to the classical work of Aristotle offers a different approach to studying girls' development. The girls were interviewed in an effort to discover personal conceptions of courage, their thoughts on the relevance of intention, experience, emotion, sanguinity, and ignorance to courage, as Aristotle describes these terms, and how courage is present in their lives. The girls also performed an essay-writing task to clarify their thoughts.
Several dominant themes resulted from this study. These included the participants stating that (1) a courageous act must stem from good intentions; (2) courage comes as a matter of experience or practice; (3) with enough practice courage can become a habit and thus part of your character; (4) while emotion is a precursor to courage, a courageous act cannot be done rashly and requires a degree of rationality to act in order to be considered true courage; and (5) their own recollections of acting courageously are in early development and thus far have been minimal. An additional finding was the degree to which participants found overly aggressive girls spur opportunities for courage. Implications for a model of active learning, character education, and further research on girls' development are suggested. / 2031-01-02
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/31962 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Simpson Brown, Diane J. |
| Publisher | Boston University |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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