FOLK NARRATIVES AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL FOR MORAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS

This article examines the pedagogical effectiveness of folk narratives as a culturally grounded and methodologically productive tool for moral education in school contexts. Moral education is treated as the formation of stable ethical orientations, value-based judgment, prosocial dispositions, and reflective self-regulation that are developed through dialogic learning and socially meaningful experience. The research integrates theoretical positions from character education, narrative pedagogy, and socio-cultural learning theory and proposes an instructional model for classroom implementation. The model relies on value-oriented pre-reading framing, guided interpretive discussion, perspective-taking, dramatization, and transfer tasks connecting narrative meanings with authentic school-life situations. The results of the qualitative-analytic synthesis indicate that folk narratives enable learners to grasp moral categories through concrete scenarios and emotionally engaging plot structures, while teacher-guided interpretation strengthens moral reasoning and value internalization. Methodological recommendations are offered concerning narrative selection criteria, lesson structuring, and assessment indicators for moral-learning outcomes.