The Effect of SMART Moral Education on Left-Behind Children’s Prosocial Behavior and Filial Piety Among Left-Behind Children

The erosion of filial piety and prosocial behavior during China’s economic reforms signals a concerning decline in moral development within society. Insufficient teaching resources in rural areas hinder left-behind children from receiving adequate moral education. The SMART moral education program employs an activity-based approach to address this gap, specifically targeting rural left-behind children. The SMART moral education emphasizes sharing behavior and interpersonal relationships. This study involved the primary three students from two elementary schools in Hunan Province, utilizing a control group (n = 78) and an experimental group (n = 58) to assess the effectiveness of SMART moral education in fostering prosocial attitudes and reciprocal filial piety. Results from factorial ANOVA indicated that SMART moral education significantly enhanced altruistic attitudes and reciprocal filial beliefs among participants. This study offers preliminary evidence supporting SMART moral education as an effective strategy for promoting moral development among left-behind students. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).