The effect of primary school students? empathic inclinations and perceptions of teacher attitudes on their value judgements

The goal of this study is to review how empathic inclinations and perceived teacher attitudes explain primary school students? value judgments in a framework of a model. To this intent, a model is built of research variables in a cause and effect relationship to identify the direct and indirect effects and a model test is carried out. The causal comparative pattern is used in this research and the research group is formed of 451(240 female and 211 male) 4th and 5th grade primary school students. In the collection process of the data, ?Inclination for Justness Scale?, ?Inclination for Respect Scale?, ?Inclination for Indulgence Scale?, ?Inclination for Solidarity Scale?, ?Inclination for Hospitality Scale?, ?Inclination for Honesty Scale?, ?Inclination for Affection? which are developed by the researcher and ?Inclination for Empathy Scale? which is developed by Dokmen, were used. SPSS 11.5 and AMOS 6.0 were employed for the analysis of research data and path analysis models were used to test the hypothesed models. In addition to these, Factor Analysis, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient and Independent Samples T- Test are used. In consequence of the research, it is determined that the ethical value judgments (justness, indulgence, respect, solidarity, hospitality, honesty, affection) of the primary school students can be explained directly and indirectly with their empathic inclinations and their perception of teacher attitudes (democratic attitude, authoritarian attitude, unrestrained attitude) within a cause and effect relationship. The results are discussed in literature and hypothetic aspects and concordantly, suggestions are made for the future research and implementations.