Marife Turkish Journal of Religious Studies

Abstract

In recent years, there have been some changes in the overall aims of educational programs, and in this context, educational authorities have adopted new approaches to skills development. Academic outcomes related to skills like primitive language literacy, science and mathematics, and intercultural literacy have become the main topic of conversation in curricula. The concept of moral literacy has taken on increasing significance, particularly in moral education, which is an essential part of citizenship education.
Moral literacy refers to a skill set that includes reflecting on one's own moral values, identifying possible consequences of various alternatives and their effects, making rational decisions about which option is consistent with one's values, and taking responsibility for one's own actions. Moral literacy, conceptualized by Nancy Tuana, consists of three core competencies: moral sensitivity, moral reasoning and moral imagination, and three sub-competencies. These skills typically include the intellectual abilities that drive the moral decision-making process. Moral literacy can help individuals to conduct comprehensive analyses for a moral situation, to develop functional solutions, and to establish healthier social and universal interactions.
This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable attitude scale based on the Tuana's theory. As part of the research developed in the Exploratory Sequential Mixed Method, relevant literature was examined and moral literacy studies were examined. Thanks to the clarification of the theoretical structure, the process of developing the scale was initiated. The following steps were taken in the development of the moral literacy scale: i. Creating the object pool, ii. Defining content validity, iii. Review and finalization of draft form, iv. Application of the scale, c. Component analysis, construct validity analysis and reliability analysis, vi. Examination of subscale correlation to total score, vii. Finalization of scale and reporting.
Initially, the draft 30-item form was sent to five field experts and one linguistic expert, one item was removed from the scale as they were incompatible with the scope, as suggested by the experts in the field, an additional item was added. The draft form was finalized modifications and applied to 653 university students studying at Eskişehir Osmangazi University and Anadolu University in the fall semester of the 2018-2019 academic year. 88 data, which were not marked carefully and were not considered reliable when capturing data in SPSS, were excluded from the analysis. When analyzing the items on the scale, three items were excluded from the provisional scale since the correlation coefficients are below .35, and the construction validity was accepted.
In the exploratory factorial analysis, seven other elements with values below .40 and overlapping were excluded from the analysis. The factorial analysis carried out after this process made it possible to obtain a structure composed of five factors and twenty elements. The sub-dimensions categorized in the scale according to the results of the exploratory factorial analysis were named as moral reasoning (four items), moral awareness (five items), moral imagination (five items), moral sensitivity (three items) and moral stability (three items). The reliability analysis found that the overall reliability of the scale was high, but the degree of reliability of the sub-dimensions was medium. The confirmatory factorial analysis also showed that the structure discovered by the exploratory factorial analysis was consistent and reliable. When the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scale was examined, it could be stated that there is a significant and positive relationship between the sub-dimensions, and a total score for the attitudes toward moral literacy skills would be obtained. Therefore, it can be said that the scale created as a result of these processes may accurately and validly assess university students' attitudes toward moral literacy skills. It may be suggested that empirical studies examine the moral skills of university students in terms of dependent and independent variables, and also scale development and application studies examining students' attitudes towards moral literacy skills at secondary and high schools would be conducted in subsequent studies.