Kohlberg Theory

12 Key excerpts on "Kohlberg Theory"

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  Handbook of Educational Theories

  • Beverly Irby, Genevieve H. Brown, Rafael Lara-Aiecio(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  643 The Handbook of Educational Theories , pp. 643–651 Copyright © 2013 Information Age Publishing, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. CHAPTER 53 Moral Development Theory Neo-Kohlbergian Theory H. S. MECHLER and S. J. THOMA Heather S. Mechler Bucknell University Stephen J. Thoma The University of Alabama K OHLBERG ’ S T HEORY When Lawrence Kohlberg proposed his theory of moral judgment development, he was attempting to provide a cognitive-developmental structure for a phe-nomenon that had previously been described in pri-marily social terms. Previous notions of morality focused on societal norms, so that any action or deci-sion could be deemed moral so long as it conformed to a particular set of conventions held by the group (Laps-ley, 1996). However, this understanding of morality troubled Kohlberg, as it would have theoretically justi-fied Nazi atrocities and other behaviors that were argu-ably wrong but congruent with the social norms of a time and place. His theory of moral judgment develop-ment outlined a series of stages through which a per-son would pass over time with development that culminated in the highest stage, which was considered the most developmentally adaptive, and therefore good, regardless of culture, location, or era (Kohlberg, 1969; Lapsley, 1996). Kohlberg’s theory sought to describe the ways in which the underlying thought processes of morality changed with increased cognitive capacity and other developmental gains. This developmental progression was divided into three levels and six stages that described increasingly broad scopes of consideration that factored in to moral decision making. The first level, Preconventional , corresponded to a self-focused morality in which the individual made moral judg-ments. The second, Conventional, described a norms-centered morality in which moral judgment relied on legal and social norms.

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  Moral Development and Reality

  Beyond the Theories of Kohlberg and Hoffman

  • John C. Gibbs(Author)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  3 Kohlberg's Theory A Critique and New View L awrence Kohlberg's contribution to the field of moral development has been enormous. Indeed, Kohlberg almost single-handedly innovated the field of cognitive moral development in American psychology. Such work scarcely existed in the early 1960s when Kohlberg began to publish his research: His choice of topics [namely, 'morality'] made him someth-ing of an 'odd duck' within American psychology. . . . No up-to-date social scientist, acquainted with [the relativism of] psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and cultural anthropology, used such words [as moral judgment develop-ment] at all (Brown & Herrnstein, 1975, pp. 307-308). Yet these scientists could not ignore Kohlberg's claim—and supporting evidence—that moral-ity is not basically relative to culture, that is, that across diverse cultures one can discern a qualitative sequence of progressively more adequate modes of moral judgment. Kohlberg became one of the most frequently cited psy-chologists in the social and behavioral sciences (Haggbloom et al., 2002). His work is described and discussed in virtually every major developmental psychology textbook on the current market. Kohlberg's claim had its precedent in Piaget's. Piaget had challenged Durkheimian and other sociological views of morality as simply a matter of culturally relative, internalized norms. The challenge consisted chiefly of these claims: (a) that the essence of mature or profound moral judgment is not a socialized or internalized norm but instead a logical ideal that is 57 58 Moral Development and Reality constructed in part through exchanges of perspective with others, (b) that the progressive age trend in the succession of phases toward this ideal is essentially the same in any culture (invariant sequence and cross-cultural universality) , and (c) that mature moral judgment can in its own right motivate mature moral behavior (cognitive primacy).

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  Portraits of Pioneers in Developmental Psychology

  • Wade Pickren, Donald A. Dewsbury, Michael Wertheimer, Wade Pickren, Donald A. Dewsbury, Michael Wertheimer(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 9 in this volume), who had found that cognitive development plays a part in moral development. The incorporation of Piaget’s ideas led Kohlberg to search for the cognitive-developmental foundations of universal moral principles. His 1958 dissertation proposed six stages of moral development, in contrast to Piaget’s two (heteronomy and autonomy), and took a bold stand for the validity of universal justice-oriented moral principles. He based these stages of social-moral reasoning on the understanding that mental structures or cognitive schemata are evolving within the developing brain.

  Subsequently, through the course of 20 years of repeated interviews with his original research participants as well as other research samples, he observed that when participants’ thought structures were inadequate to solve social-moral dilemmas, their thought structures would change in a predictable pattern of six stages. More specifically, his research suggested the following hypotheses: Each stage represents a qualitatively different way people resolve moral dilemmas. The stages form an invariant sequence: People do not skip stages or reverse their order. Kohlberg theorized that the six stages are hierarchically integrated—higher stages are better in the sense that a person who reasons at a higher stage can understand the moral reasoning used by those at lower stages—but the converse would not be true. Kohlberg also hypothesized that these stages are universal: They apply to all human beings in all cultures, even though many persons do not progress through all of the stages (Colby et al., 1983).

  Kohlberg’s stages of moral development were organized into three levels, with two stages each, for a total of six stages (Colby & Kohlberg, 1987; Kohlberg, 1984). Kohlberg referred to the first two stages as the level of preconventional morality because children at this level (typically aged 4 through 10 years) do not yet understand socially customary or conventional forms of morality as anything more than the arbiter of penalties for breaches in conduct. Stage 1, which Kohlberg called the punishment and obedience orientation, is evident among young children who unquestioningly orient to authority figures and believe that the physical consequences of action determine its goodness or badness. They avoid breaking rules set by external authorities for obedience’s sake, to avoid punishment, and to avoid doing physical damage to people or property. Justice is punishing the bad in terms of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Kohlberg illustrated this concept by quoting his 4-year-old son who had stopped eating meat because he said it is “bad” to kill animals. One night, after Kohlberg had read him “a book about Eskimo life that included a description of a seal-killing expedition,” his son became angry and said, “There is one kind of meat I would eat, Eskimo meat. It is bad to kill animals, so it’s all right to eat Eskimos” (Kohlberg, 1981, pp. 14–15, 46, 143). Stage 2, termed individualism, instrumental purpose, and exchange

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  Character Psychology And Character Education

  • Daniel K. Lapsley, F. Clark Power, Daniel K. Lapsley, F. Clark Power(Authors)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  o n e Moral Psychology at the Crossroads Daniel K. Lapsley and Darcia Narvaez t h e k o h l b e rg pa r a d i g m Until recently the study of moral development has been dominated by stage theories in the cognitive developmental tradition. In this tradition moral reasoning is said to gradually approach an ideal form of perfected operation as a result of successive ac-commodations that are made over the course of development. These accommodations progressively extend, elaborate, and structure moral cognition, and are described as stages that possess certain sequential and organizational properties. The most vivid example of a moral stage sequence is, of course, Kohlberg’s well-known theory. In-deed, there are few theorists in the history of psychology who have had more influ-ence on developmental theory and educational practice than Kohlberg. His embrace of Piagetian constructivism, his writings on the developmental grounding of justice reasoning, and his educational innovations have left an indelible mark on develop-mental psychology and education. 18 Kohlberg claimed, for example, that his stage theory provided the psychological resources by which to defeat ethical relativism. His cognitive developmental research program mounted a profound challenge to behavioral and social learning views of so-cialization, and returned morality to the forefront of scientific study in developmen-tal psychology. The educational implications of his work are still evident in sociomoral curricula (e.g., “plus-one” dilemma discussion) and in efforts to reform the structure of educational institutions (e.g., just communities). Clearly, then, Kohlberg’s research program has had a salutary influence on two generations of scholars ( Lapsley 1996 , forthcoming). Yet it is also true that the authority of Kohlberg’s work has diminished signifi-cantly in the last decade. This can be explained, in part, by the general decline of Pi-aget’s theory in contemporary developmental research.

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  Ethical Issues in Developmental Disabilities

  • Moore, Stephen, Hayes, Linda J., Hayes, Gregory(Authors)
  • 1(Publication Date)
  • Context Press

    (Publisher)

  If development is stimulated rather than imparted via fixed rules, the child will naturally move to higher stages of moral development. He insisted his studies, which covered a variety of cultures in addition to the United States (e.g., India, Britain, Honduras, Taiwan, Mexico’s Yucatan region, Israel, and Canada) demon- Table 3 Kohlberg’s Stage Theory Preconventional Level “Responsive to cultural labels, but interprets these in terms of the physical consequences of action or the power of those who enunciate the rules” 1. Orientation to punishment, obedience, and power 2. Instrumental exchange - conforming to obtain rewards Conventional Level “Maintaining the expectations of the group is valuable in its own right, and efforts are made to support and justify this order” 3. Interpersonal conformity - the “good boy” orientation 4. Orientation to law, order, authority, and duty Postconventional Level “Effort to define moral values that have applicability apart from the authority of groups or the individual’s identification with them” 5. Social contract orientation 6. Acts of conscience in accord with universal ethical principles Stages of Moral Development as Stages of Rule-Goverance 61 strated an invariant sequence of development that was not subject to the whims of cultural relativism. Each stage represented an organized system of thought, and individuals functioned at a specific stage at least the majority of the time regardless of the moral dilemma presented. Each stage in Kohlberg’s theory represented a more evolved form of judgment because, in his view, each step came ever closer to meeting what he termed the prerequisites of morality: impersonality, universalizability, ideality, preemptiveness, and the like (Kohlberg, 1980; 1983). Analysis. Kohlberg’s Stage 1 and 2 (see Table 1) correspond fairly closely to pliance and tracking.

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  Fundamentals of Developmental Psychology

  • Peter Mitchell, Fenja Ziegler(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Level 3, Stage 6: This is the highest stage of moral development according to Kohlberg. The individual may adhere to externally imposed rules much of the time, but now her behavior may also be governed by her own moral principles, independently of rules imposed from an external source. The individual functioning at Kohlberg’s Stage 6 has the capability to perceive higher moral principles, those which transcend any specific laws. These relate to justice, equality of human rights, and respect for the dignity of other people.

  According to Kohlberg, we gravitate toward Stage 6, but not everyone gets to the top of the hierarchy. Indeed, Kohlberg acknowledges that perhaps only a minority of the population progress all the way to the highest stage. So nobody can move down a stage, but on the other hand it is possible that a given individual might fail to move up into a higher stage. Another central point Kohlberg makes is that it is impossible for any of the stages to be skipped during the course of an individual’s moral development.

  Critically evaluate Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.

  Evaluation of Kohlberg's Stage Theory

  Many studies have been conducted to test the accuracy of Kohlberg’s description of moral development. In a review, Rest (1983) concludes that moral development does proceed in the way Kohlberg suggests, and that the sequence of stages maintains across a variety of cultures investigated throughout the world. There is, however, some concern that the definition of the stages is culturally biased toward Western society. In Western society the rights, freedom, and independence of the individual are highly valued. This is not the case to the same extent in more interdependent, community-focused cultures where the individual is perhaps not perceived to be as important as the group as a whole. In such a society, the higher levels of moral reasoning, as defined by Kohlberg, might then clash with the core values of the society an individual lives in. If we found that individuals from this more community-oriented society did not attain the highest level of moral reasoning, we might take this as a sign that their moral reasoning is underdeveloped. However, this conclusion might well be fallacious when we consider the important implications that different cultural values have. It might well be safer to assume that Kohlberg’s stages describe the moral reasoning development of children in Western societies, and that whilst some core moral values are shared between people of all cultures, there also exist differences that do not so easily translate. In that sense Kohlberg’s stage model has contributed much to the thinking about moral development, but does not present a universal account of development (Gibbs, Basinger, Grime, & Snarey, 2007

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  Postconventional Moral Thinking

  A Neo-kohlbergian Approach

  • James R. Rest, Darcia Narv ez, Stephen J. Thoma, Muriel J. Bebeau, Muriel J. Bebeau, Darcia Narv ez(Authors)
  • 1999(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  Kohlberg substituted the features of Rawls’ thought experiment with the psychological notion of justice operations. Kohlberg’s Stage 6—and the notions of ideal reversibility or “moral musical chairs”—became the imaginative construction of a moral point of view described in terms of “justice operations,” thus accomplishing the same end as Rawls’ thought experiment. Kohlberg’s conception of Stage 6, and the five stages leading to it, became simultaneously a developmental stage theory (a psychological theory of change over time) and also a normative theory of ethics (a philosophical theory, why higher is better; see Kohlberg, 1981). Furthermore, Kohlberg claimed that Stage 6 would produce moral consensus: At Stage 6, people would agree on substantive issues (e.g., 1984, pp. 246, 248, 259, 272, 285, 294, 299). In addition, this formalistic theory allowed Kohlberg to argue for a type of moral education in public schools that seemed to steer between the shoals of indoctrination (prohibited by the latest interpretation of the American Constitution) and moral relativism (skepticism that moral discourse was anything more than personal preference or unreflective conformity to group practice, leading either to an “anything goes” morality or a mindless conformity). Thus, Kohlberg formulated a psychological theory of development that at the same time was a philosophical theory of normative ethics.

  In the 1950s and 1960s, designing a psychological theory on Piaget’s model seemed like a good idea. However, since then scholars have questioned Piaget’s model on several grounds: his portrayal of advanced thinking in terms of logicomathematical models (e.g., Flavell & Wohlwill, 1969), whether cognitive development actually happens as Piaget depicted it (e.g., Flavell, 1985; Gelman & Baillargeon, 1983), and problems with the staircase metaphor for development (e.g., Rest, 1979; Siegler, 1997).

  Kohlberg portrayed development in an especially bold way: (a) that development is a matter of qualitative differences, not quantitative; (b) that the thinking of subjects displays a “structured wholeness” using only one (or sometimes two) stages of thinking at one period in time; and (c) that development occurs one step at a time, without reversals or stage skipping (see Rest, 1979, for citations from Kohlberg that document his views on these matters). Siegler (1997, p. 95) is especially succinct with what is wrong about the “hard” stage model:

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  Following Kohlberg

  Liberalism and the Practice of Democratic Community

  • Donald R. C. Reed(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  Tarissa realizes moving in with Willard and Jerry would be difficult 6 Introduction to the Kohlbergian Project for them all, but she doesn't think she can afford any other possibility she can imagine as acceptable, and she does not want to be a financial burden to Willard, only increasing his anxiety about his frustrated career. Scholars commonly identify Kohlberg with his theory about how our reasoning concerning such situations develops over the course of our lives. In his dissertation at the University of Chicago, Kohlberg ( 195 8) formulated an account of six stages of development through which the moral reasoning of all humans moves, regardless of cul-ture, from childhood to maturity. He identified the stages as six dis-tinct ways of thinking about what morality requires when people are faced with problematic dilemmas, six distinct moral philosophies. Kohlberg devoted much of his thirty-year career to refining and cor-roborating the revolutionary findings of his initial research. Kohlberg's stage theory gained prominence in the 1970s and was described in many textbooks in developmental psychology as the best or even the only credible account of moral development. In the 1980s, however, his theory lost much of its support among academic psy-chologists and social scientists generally. It also came under increas-ingly harsh criticism among academic philosophers. Many believed it had gone the way of other displaced scientific paradigms. It had had its day. It was no longer scientifically or philosophically viable. My Revisionist Account I wrote my dissertation (Reed, 1986) under the impression these crit-ics were right. I focused on Kohlberg's notion of Socratic dialogue as a method of moral education, and I looked specifically at his prefer-ence for the teaching method of Socrates in Plato's Meno and other earlier dialogues as opposed to the educational recommendations of Socrates in Plato's Republic.

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  Theories of Development

  Concepts and Applications

  • William Crain(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 7

  Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

   

  BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION

  An outstanding example of research in the Piagetian tradition is the work of Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987). Kohlberg focused on moral development and provided a stage theory of moral thinking that goes well beyond Piaget’s initial formulations.

  Kohlberg1 grew up in Bronxville, New York, and attended Andover Academy in Massachusetts, an academically demanding private high school. He did not go straight to college but instead went to help the Israeli cause, serving as the second engineer on an old freighter carrying European refugees through British blockades to Israel. After this, in 1948, Kohlberg enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he scored so high on admission tests that he only had to take a limited number of courses to earn his bachelor’s degree. This he did in one year. He stayed on at Chicago for graduate work in psychology, at first thinking he would become a clinical psychologist. But he soon became interested in Piaget and began interviewing children and adolescents on moral issues. The result was his doctoral dissertation (1958a), the first rendition of his new stage theory. Kohlberg taught at the University of Chicago from 1962 to 1968 and at Harvard University from 1968 until his death in 1987.

  Kohlberg was an informal, unassuming man. When he taught, he frequently came to class dressed in a flannel shirt and baggy pants—as if he had thought it was his day off. He usually began asking questions in an off-the-cuff manner. In the first days of the school year, students didn’t always know what to make of him. But they soon saw that they were in the presence of a true scholar, a man who had thought long and deeply about critical issues in philosophy and psychology, and Kohlberg was inviting them to ponder these issues with him. In his lectures and writings, he did much to help others appreciate the wisdom of the “old psychologists,” writers such as Rousseau, John Dewey, and James Mark Baldwin.

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  Handbook of Moral Behavior and Development

  Volume 1: Theory

  • William M. Kurtines, Jacob Gewirtz, Jacob L. Lamb, William M. Kurtines, Jacob Gewirtz, Jacob L. Lamb(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  The constructive process, whatever its precise nature, does not take place in a vacuum. In the course of their everyday experience, children encounter all sorts of implicit or explicit examples of the higher level concepts which they themselves will acquire. That does not imply that they internalize the examples to which they are exposed in any direct or automatic way. But it is equally unlikely that they systematically ignore them…. The objective … must be to understand the specific ways in which the individual’s constructive activity utilizes these external data. (Kuhn, 1988, p. 229)

  Maturity in Kohlberg’s Theory. Not only Kohlberg’s apparent allowance of internalization but also his interpretation of moral judgment maturity are entailed in the preconventional-conventional-postconventional trichotomy. As we have seen, Kohlberg strongly implies that moral judgment maturity is most properly defined by the postconventional level. It is time finally to discard this trichotomy so that a more valid understanding of moral judgment maturity can emerge. As I argue below, the so-called conventional level already entails moral judgment maturity. I suggest that the so-called postconventional or “principled” level should not be regarded as the exclusive repository of moral judgment maturity or even as a part of a standard stage sequence. On the other hand, philosophical reflection is helpful in the elucidation of one’s implicit normative ethics.

  The moral judgment maturity of at least some aspects of stages 3 and 4 was identified by Kohlberg (1984) himself. Interestingly, the contemporary version of stages 3 and 4 contains moral judgment designated by Kohlberg in the 1950s as stage 5 or 6, for example, the “principled-sounding” moral judgment of high school students who conceptualized “the moral value of life as taking precedence over obedience to laws or authority” (p. 447). During his longitudinal work in the 1960s, Kohlberg discovered a theoretical problem: subjects whose moral judgment was designated “postconventional” or “principled” in high school evidenced regression to stage 2 reasoning when they were reinterviewed during the college years. The regression involved approximately 20% of his sample, a major violation of the theory-based expectation of progressive stage sequence (Kohlberg & Kramer, 1969). Hence, Kohlberg reclassified such “principled-sounding” moral judgment as actually indicative of stages 3 and 4. Kohlberg (1984) thereby solved his theoretical problem (i.e., restored progressive stage sequence), but also created a new one: a contradiction between the principled-sounding moral ideality now included within stages 3 and 4 and the traditional designation of those stages as “conventional.” Specifically, how could a subject whose moral judgment represents an internalization of and conformity to “the rules and expectations of others, especially those of authorities” (quoted earlier), produce moral judgment conceptualizing “the moral value of life as taking precedence over obedience to laws or authority”?

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  Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

  • Jürgen Habermas, Christian Lenhardt, Shierry Weber Nicholsen, Christian Lenhardt, Shierry Weber Nicholsen(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  stages of development.

  If there is no empirical evidence to suggest that we are dealing with more than one postconventional stage, Kohlberg’s description of stage 5 also becomes problematic. We may at least suspect that the ideas of the social contract and the greatest good for the greatest number are confined to traditions that hold sway primarily in England and America and that they represent a particular culturally specific substantive manifestation of principled moral judgment.

  Taking up certain misgivings of John Gibbs, Thomas McCarthy points out that the relation between a psychologist knowledgeable about moral theory and his experimental subject changes in a way that is methodologically significant as the subject reaches the postconventional level and takes a hypothetical attitude to his social world:

  The suggestion I should like to advance is that Kohlberg’s account places the higher-stage moral subject, at least in point of competence, at the same reflective or discursive level as the moral psychologist. The subject’s thought is now marked by the decentration, differentiation and reflexivity which are the conditions of entrance into the moral theorist’s sphere of argumentation. Thus the asymmetry between the prereflective and the reflective, between theories-in-action and explication, which underlies the model of reconstruction begins to break down. The subject is now in a position to argue with the theorist about questions of morality.47

  In the same essay McCarthy draws a useful parallel between sociomoral and cognitive development:

  Piaget views the underlying functioning of intelligence as unknown to the individual at lower stages of cognition. At superior levels, however, the subject may reflect on previously tacit thought operations and the implicit cognitive achievements of earlier stages, that is, he or she may engage in epistemological reflection. And this places the subject, at least in point of competence, at the same discursive level as the cognitive psychologist. Here, too, asymmetry between the subject’s prereflective know-how and the investigator’s reflective know-that begins to break down. The subject is now in a position to argue with the theorist about the structure and conditions of knowledge.48

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  Moral Development in a Global World

  Research from a Cultural-Developmental Perspective

  • Lene Arnett Jensen(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Turiel, E. (2006). The development of morality: Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3, Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. 10 The next step for the cultural-developmental approach: from moral reasoning to moral intentions and behavior Gisela Trommsdorff The main goal of this volume is to present a cultural-developmental approach to moral psychology. The volume addresses the divergent and multiple ways that morality develops in diverse cultures, thus synthesizing developmental and cultural perspectives. It draws attention to the question of how to bridge the lenses of developmental and cultural psychology. The authors expand current theoretical approaches by including conceptualizations of morality beyond Western traditions and highlighting more than one kind of moral reasoning. The goal of this volume is to lay the groundwork for a theoretical approach to moral development that is valid both across and within cultures. Overview of the volume Little is known about the development of moral reasoning across the life course in diverse cultures. This volume includes contributions by scholars from a vari- ety of countries who present findings on diverse contexts of moral development. The volume, however, avoids the problem of presenting heterogeneous theoret- ical approaches. All contributions share the cultural-developmental approach to moral reasoning, and, more specifically, they share Jensen’s (2008, 2011, 2015, and Chapter 1, this volume) assumptions of the template model. Jensen conceptualizes moral development based on a cultural-developmental template describing developmental patterns of moral reasoning across the life course in terms of three Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity. The idea of the template model is that the general developmental patterns for the ethics emerge somewhat differently in different cultural contexts and vary on how prominent they become in the course of development in different cultures.

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