Lawrence Koohlberg : The Theory Of Moral Development

During the preconventional morality level, the person is not really aware of the various ethical standards; the child is not fully conscious of his or her own actions (powerpoint). For example, a 5-year-old is running around while the mother of the child is cooking. The mom tells the kid not to run while she is cooking because he or she will get hurt; the little 5 year old runs anyway and gets burned and starts crying. Now that it happened to the kid, they eventually learned their lesson and whenever they are around

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”).

Lawrence Kohlberg was greatly influenced by Piaget, which laid the foundation for the basis of his theories of how moral and faith development is created. He hypothesized that there are six stage-like positions for the development of moral reasoning. Piaget’s focus consisted of a subject knowing and interacting with a well versed environment. Where Piaget was concerned how the person knows the world scientifically and mathematically, Kohlberg focused on how the person structured their experiences and judgments about the social world. Kohlberg also says that the sequence of the stages is universal and that the greater stages are truer than the earlier forms. According to Kohlberg, moral choice is an interpretation of a moral dilemma situation, the construction of the points of view of the various participants and affected parties, and the weighing of their respective claims, rights, duties and commitments to the good and that they are all cognitive acts. Kohlberg’s hypothesis is that morality is more predictable and expected from people in the later stages of Kohlberg’s theory. Kohlberg’s six stages are grouped in two’s, making three main levels, which are as follows: the Pre-Conventional stage, the Conventional stage, and the Post-Conventional stages. Each stage is sequential and requires one to go through each phase before moving on to the next phase.

Augustine 's understanding of the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility is more biblical than Cassian 's view. Augustine 's school of theology totally relies on God as the grace giver, however Cassian 's school relies on man 's merit before receiving grace. This debate has been going on since the early church and still affects the church today. Many people have different opinions and interpretations of how the Bible deals with predestination and man 's free will. Augustine 's understanding is more biblical due to his ability to use scripture properly, show both sides of the argument, and defend his case with better clarity.

A brief overview of the history of moral psychology in the Kohlbergian tradition is necessary to understand the significance and need for the current proposal. Jean Piaget presented his construct of moral reasoning in his theory of development, and he found there were two stages of moral reasoning—heterenomous and autonomous. The former is associated with Piaget’s concrete operational stage as moral reasoning is dependent upon the relational context of the child and authority figures (parents, God, etc.) and is inductive by nature. The latter is

It is upon this theory and study that Lawrence Kohlberg developed his own theory of morality; that contains three levels and six stages. Unlike Piaget who solely targeted children in his theory, Kohlberg discusses early adolescence as well as young adulthood. Kohlberg’s three overall levels and first three stages are basically the same as in Piaget’s theory. It is in his last three stages that his theory differs from Piaget’s. Kohlberg’s fourth stage of morality, which takes place during level two: conventional morality, addresses children ages ten to thirteen or beyond. Kohlberg refers to this fourth stage as “social concern and conscience” (376). During this stage, adolescents begin to obey rules and laws because they understand that it is necessary in order to maintain social order. Immediately it can be seen that nurture related factors are associated with this stage. Both rules and society are discussed here. As mentioned earlier, laws and rules are given to people; no one is born with them. Maintaining social order deals exclusively with society, and has not the slightest connection to genetics. Also considering the age range for this stage, it can be assumed that most children

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

Kohlberg (1963, 1981, 1984; Colby & Kohlberg, 1987) expanded Piaget’s work, developing a most influential cognitive developmental theory of moral development. Kohlberg proposed the progression through the invariant, universal sequence of three moral levels each composed of two distinct stages. According to Kohlberg, no stage can be skipped, neither will there be a regression to an earlier stage.

Lawrence Kohlberg laid the groundwork for the current debate within psychology on moral development. He proposed that children form ways of thinking through their experiences which include understandings of moral concepts such as justice, rights, equality and human welfare. Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment beyond the ages. He determined that the process of attaining moral maturity took longer and was more gradual than other studies have shown.

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development proposes the idea that the understanding of morality starts as an individual is in their early childhood years. Whether one morally develops negatively or positively is dependent on how the individual completes their tasks in their stage of moral development across the lifespan. The first level is preconventional morality; Individuals at this level view themselves in an egocentric way and judge the morality of their action by its direct

The mentioned attitude pays no attention to the eternal moral foundations, to the moral motives and emotion, to faith and cultural morality, to the moral behavior and objective reactions, and the mental structure of the people in the rest of the world. Investigating the moral development theories among Western psychologists brings us to the conclusion that we can divide them into three groups. A group of the Western psychologists (such as Lorenz, 1983; Goodall, 1990; da Waal, 1991 & 1996; Raine, 1997; Hoffman 2000; Haidt, 2001) believe the roots of moralities and social behavior to be in the human biological evolution history. Another group (including the psycho-analysts such as Freud, 1925/1961, and social-learning theory-makers such as Bandura, 1977) believe moralities to be compatibility with social norms. The third group, is the one whose viewpoints have been considered more than any of the other two groups, who state that morality is fundamentally the amount of cognitive development. Jean Piaget and (1932/1965) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1976), more than any other psychologist, represent this group. The though foundations of some other psychologists (such as Gilligan, 1982; & Rest, 1986) who have conducted more recent studies about moral development as well can be considered in this

For nearly thirty years he has amplified his Cognitive-Developmental theory of moralisation which has now become prominent in the field of moral development and its application to moral education. Kohlberg proposed that moral difficulties motivated their own development through a fixed sequence of increasingly adaptable kinds of moral reasoning.

“It should be determined that the moral development of the youngster is deficient or stagnated. After all, if there is no reason to think that there is any developmental delay or shortcoming, then there is no reason to believe that this youngster lacked moral education.” (Le Sage)

Many prominent child psychologists have regarded infants as amoral. Psychologists of this view would argue that infants have no understanding of morals until they are taught

Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) further developed the works of Piaget (1896-1980) on moral development. This essay will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of Kohlberg’s theory in a critical manner, looking at the positive aspects of his research and the disadvantages of the types of situations he gave in his experiments, the universal accuracy of his results and the controversial findings of sex differences in regards to morality. Kohlberg advanced Piaget’s theory of moral development by interviewing 10-13 year-old boys to find out how they would attempt to resolve moral issues. These issues varied between situations that involved obeying the law, authority