Humanitarian Narrative as Tools for Moral Development and Global Citizenship in Preschool Education.

Abstract

This paper will provide a narrative review of humanitarian narrative as a means of moral development and global citizenship in preschool education. Values like honesty, kindness, and respect have always been expressed in traditional tales like myths, folktales and animal fables, but these media tend to simplify morality in dichotomous terms of good and bad. In comparison, humanitarian stories focus on universal principles of compassion, fairness, resilience, and collaboration, thereby prompting children to expand their moral interests beyond their immediate cultural frames. Three dimensions are illuminated: the first are the psychological and developmental factors, including empathy, sentimentalism, neurological readiness, and cultural context, which determine how young children approach humanitarian stories; the second is the differences in the form and delivery of the traditional and humanitarian narrative, its focus, and impact; and the third is the primary attributes of humanitarian stories, including empathetic identification, overt traits of morality, and emotional mobilization, and perspective-taking. The results indicate that humanitarian stories offer more ground to a higher-order moral reasoning and world consciousness, but their usefulness requires developmentally appropriate adaptation and teacher scaffolding. By teaching humanitarian principles in early childhood, these stories can foster empathy, justice, and accountability, thereby aligning early childhood education with UNESCO’s vision for Global Citizenship Education and the Sustainable Development Goals..