Annotated Bibliography On Moral Development

Moral Development is defined as “changes in thoughts, feelings and behaviors regarding standards of right and wrong” (Santrock, 2010). Moral development

Professors Bojan Borstner and Smiljana Gartner of the University of Maribor believe that ethical decision making through critical thinking is proven to be the best way for people to improve themselves as human beings. In fact, some ethics instructors want to teach their students how to project human nature itself, act in accordance with their moral beliefs, and use reasoning and thinking skills to analyze specific problems (Borstner 13). If these main class objectives could affect the curricula of educational institutions worldwide, a majority of students may have a better understanding of virtue, an expanded knowledge of human nature, and more effective communication skills for discussing any current issue. At any educational level, a typical ethics course requires students to enhance their persuasion skills by understanding and taking advanced steps to finding the right solutions to controversial issues. Reasoning skills are the most effective way to personally attain moral values because it enables people to view ethics as a critically reflective thinking process. It also helps individuals express their thoughts and reactions toward each ethical dilemma that they face in their lifetime, yet there are other steps beyond reasoning to successfully handle real-life situations. The most important of these steps are to use case studies and to interpersonally communicate often about the issues

In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel Brave New World, John (referred to as “the savage”) is the voice of freedom in a society ruled by an inexorable pursuit of superficial happiness. In the dystopian setting, the world controllers maintain public satisfaction “but at a very high price—the sacrifice of freedom, individuality, truth, beauty, a sense of purpose, and the concept of God” (Neilson). John’s unorthodox beliefs about monogamy, God, drugs, and freedom clash with that of the overwhelming majority of people in the totalitarian London utopia. This barrier is rooted in John’s natural moral development as opposed to the artificial conditioning of the rest of society and it leads to John’s complete isolation from the people of London.

As a future teacher, it will be part of my job to increase my students’ moral reasoning. Moral reasoning deals with how individuals think about moral issues. Lawrence Kohlberg developed stages of moral reasoning which researchers use to assess an individual. According to Steinberg (2014), the adults in an adolescent’s life can impact their moral development. Therefore, as their teacher, I will conduct activities in my classroom, such as Collaborative Reasoning, Think-Pair-Share, a line activity, and an online discussion board, which will foster my students’ moral development. In addition, I will monitor my students’ growth by conducting a pre-assessment as well as a final assessment. Through my classroom activities, I expect my students to

Lawrence Kohlberg is known for his theory of moral development developed in 1958. His theory was dependent on the thinking of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget and American philosopher John Dewey. It consists of three levels of moral reasoning: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. These levels are based on the degree to which an individual accommodates to the conventional standards of society. Each level aquires two stages that serve as different standards of sophistication in moral reasoning. Overall, Kohlberg affirms that moral development is a process of maturing that emerges from thinking about about moral issues (“Kohlberg’s Moral Development”).

Moral Development: how it ties to

What is also worth noticing is that spiritual maturity is greatly fostered through educating children. It is undeniable that the prerequisite for adults to encourage children moral awareness development is being the paragon of virtue. As a result, they always self-consciously conduct themself in parental position, which means the childish spontaneity in their speech and action yields to mature deliberation. In addition, having a kid, people profoundly penetrate the moral lessons in the university. These lessons, which took them a long time to learn by rote, now become a useful tool for them to teach etiquette to their child. In this case, parents put themselves at the place of teacher to thoroughly understand moral philosophy and deliver it in the simplest word which is suitable for an innocent thought. Consequently, practice ethical thought everyday will lead parents to higher level of maturity.

The link between morality and human nature has been a progressive reoccurring theme since ancient times (Prinz, 2008). Moral development is a characteristic of a person’s general development that transpires over the course of a lifetime. Moral development is derived by a wide variety of cultural and demographic factors that appear to influence morally relevant actions. Turiel (2006) defined morality as an individuals “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.” Individuals’ moral judgments are frequently considered to be a product of culturally specific controls that provide a framework for behavioral motivations that are sensitive to the effects of gender, education, religion and politics (Banerjee, Huebner & Hauser, 2010). While several approaches have been utilized to examine the interaction of multivariate contributors to fundamental moral differences such as: disputes about family life, sexuality, social fairness, and so on, research has suggested that ideological considerations have provided a potent and diverse explanation for the polarization of contrasting views (Weber & Federico, 2013).

Research proposes that education has a great potential to influence moral discourse and ethical dilemma resolution (Zrinyi & Balogh, 2004). Educators are in a key position to ensure that students are aware of specific strategies for dealing with moral distress through role-modeling and classroom studies (Zrinyi & Balogh). Moreover, being aware of one’s own values and biases can provide a basic point of

A survey link was created and activated via the Survey Monkey software. The survey incorporated several sections such as, briefing (see Appendix A), consent (see Appendix A), short demographic questionnaire (see Appendix B), the MCT (see Appendix C), the EAI (see Appendix D), and debriefing (see Appendix E). Young adults’ moral judgment competence was assessed via the Moral Competence

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development were based on a moral philosopher by the name of Lawrence Kohlberg. His main interest was to observe children during growth to develop and conclude which stages they best fit into. After observing both adults and children, he concluded that, “Human beings progress consecutively from one stage to the next in an invariant sequence” (“Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development”). All of the 6 stages he created, represent the morality in which a child or adult can be at; he created an age zone for each stage. There are a total of 6 stages but each main concept consists of 3 levels. Level 1 is the preconventional stage. This stage focuses on punishment/obedience and how the person decides to act due to the

The complexity of this area and the concepts involved necessitates a rather expansive look at the perspectives on Moral Development in order to develop contextual

While the problem of cheating has persisted in higher education, the perceived seriousness of cheating continues to change (McCabe & Trevino, 1996; Stephens, Young, & Calabrese, 2007). Notably, students with higher moral development levels view cheating more seriously than those with lower moral development levels (Leming, 1978; Semerci, 2006). While the process of going to college promotes students' moral development (King & Mayhew, 2002) and higher moral development levels correlate to lower incidences of cheating (Leming, 1978), determining the relationship between the two is necessary. Prior research has demonstrated a positive relationship between higher moral development levels and lower cheating incidences; however, most data is more than 30 years old (Leming, 1978).

Social and emotional development is the development of the child’s identity and self-image, relationships and feeling about themselves and learning to live with others in both the family and society which is one of the most important parts of development.

The second level of moral development is the conventional moral reasoning; “Beginning in middle school, up to middle age – most people end up here” (“Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development.”). At this level,