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A state-of-the-art review of the research in this area, this collection covers children's understanding of family, school, economics, race, politics and gender roles. Recent changes and trends in research are summarised. This is explained in terms of a progression from the Piagetian stages model of development to the current emphasis on socially-mediated sources of information, socio-cultural context and children's own naiive theories about societal phenomena. Bringing together some of the most prominent and active researchers in this field this volume presents an advanced overview of developments in this under-represented area of social psychology. 'The book provides a superb summary of the widely dispersed research in this domain. It also provides an insight into how psychologists conceive of children's relation to society. Children's Understanding of Society opens with a valuable overview of, both the field in general and the book in particular. Indeed, as a summary of the volume, it is judicious, perceptive, and resists the temptation to eulogise. This book is a rich source of empirical reviews, theoretical analysis, and commentary on the field. It will serve as an invaluable reference for those interested in social-cognitive development. Moreover, given its lucidity and accessibility, it will prove an attractive teaching resource. This book provides many clear signposts to future research, and collectively, the chapters make a strong case for the study of children's understanding of society. As such, this is a volume that merits the attention of social developmentalists.' - Mark Bennett, University of Dundee

A state-of-the-art review of the research in this area, this collection covers children's understanding of family, school, economics, race, politics and gender roles. Recent changes and trends in research are summarised. This is explained in terms of a progression from the Piagetian stages model of development to the current emphasis on socially-mediated sources of information, socio-cultural context and children's own naïve theories about societal phenomena. Bringing together some of the most prominent and active researchers in this field this volume presents an advanced overview of developments in this under-represented area of social psychology.

Following Turiel's (1983) proposal of two distinct conceptual domains of social thinking, the moral and the social‐conventional, research has revealed that children acquire competent rule‐differentiation abilities at a very early age within the family context (Smetana & Braeges, 1990; Smetana, Schlagman & Adams, 1993). This study investigated children's rule‐understanding within the context of the school by examining children's judgements of a range of infringements by schoolchildren, involving both moral and social‐conventional rules. Children, aged 5–11 years, from four primary schools, assessed six hypothetical rule‐breaking scenarios, two moral and four socio‐conventional, according to the traditional criteria. However, in order to probe the children's differentiation skills beyond a simple dichotomy between moral and socio‐conventional, the four socio‐conventional infringements were sub‐divided between two rules with discernible purpose and two rules where the function was unclear or more arbitrary. There were two main findings: (1) the children displayed competent and complex rule‐discrimination abilities with minimal age differences, not only differentiating between the moral and socio‐conventional but also perceiving significant differences between the two types of socio‐conventional rules; (2) the children also revealed a clear sense of the authority competencies of head teachers and teachers, again largely unaffected by age. However, despite these overall levels of rule understanding, there were some individual differences in the moral thinking of some of the younger children, possibly as a consequence of aspects of the school system.

A study of the role of public self-consciousness (PSC) in the perceptions of encounters in which one is the victim of a social norm violation. Undergraduates (N = 64) in GB participated completed a self-consciousness scale & reacted to vignettes in which the S was a victim of a rule violation committed by a friend. A MANOVA revealed 2 significant effects: high-PSC Ss viewed the event with greater seriousness & rated themselves as being more responsible for the event than did those low in PSC. It is concluded that PSC plays an important role in mediating perceptions of responsibility. 4 References. D. Schwartz

Previous examinations of young children's political cognition have mainly followed a socialization framework, through large-scale surveys of children's developing comprehension of the adult political world as a knowledge-goal. However, this research was formulated in the belief that children's political understanding develops as a consequence of their attempts to comprehend the political realities present in their own social environment. Therefore, as the school represents an important micropolitical context in children's lives, this study investigated their understanding of the system of the school. The empirical work reported in this thesis first presents a broad picture of the developmental trends in children's understanding as they attempt to make sense of the school, with their perceptions of such political concepts as power, authority, rules, roles and decision-making exhibiting differences with age. However, further empirical studies, examining the children's thinking for wider influences, suggested that the children's perceptions of the social environment are subject to a very complex pattern of influences, which are not necessarily the consequences of either age or cognitive differences. There was evidence of contextual effects on children's differentiation of school rules and of links between the children's attitudes and the attitudes of both teachers and parents. More importantly, there were indications that the children's perceptions of school were also subject to influences associated with their social categories, such as socio-economic class, gender and birth order. Given the extent and significance of these influences on the children's thinking which were revealed in this research, it is argued that the development of social cognition in children is much too complex for an interpretation based solely on changing cognitive capacities. It is therefore concluded that this study presents compelling evidence in favour of a social representations perspective on the developmental trends in children's political thinking.