Social representations on justice, in young people of the city of Pereira

Abstract

This article presents the results of the project titled "Social Representations of Justice in Pereira's Youth," carried out in 2006. It is a quantitative research in which 54 school-aged people were asked about extant meanings in social representations of justice. The project interpreted the answers about such representations on the basis of the youngsters' discourses and in light of their moral reasoning. The article uses concepts from moral philosophy, L. Köhlberg's theory of the development of moral judgment, social psychology, Rawl's theory of justice, and S. Moscovici's theory of social representation in order to examine the different meanings of justice. The paper makes use of Köhlberg's methodology of moral dilemmas, and moral polylemms of open answer to explore the moral reasonings and their relation with Rawl's principles of justice evidenced in the youngsters' moral arguments expressed when the individuals resolved each polylemm. The paper identifies the meanings of the social representation of justice existing today in Pereira's young people and offers pedagogical recommendations aimed at strengthening their moral education