Moral Development Framework For Education

5 Pages 1207 Words

Krause (2003), stated that “morality is concerned with fundamental questions of right and wrong, justice , fairness and basic human rights. Moral issues are mediated by sociocultural factors, since cultural values and norms have a strong bearing on how individuals think and act. Nevertheless, attitudes towards such issues as lying, stealing, murder and the value of justice are generally considered to be shared across cultures.”

While this statement provides an understanding to what Morality actually IS. It fails to define how morality develops, or what influences may affect an individual’s moral choices throughout their life. Lawrence Kohlberg’s approach to the theory of Moral Development in 1960 has had a major influence on this form of thinking and the associated research involved with moral development. Palmer (2000) outlines Kohlbergs six stages of moral development specifying three levels as follows: The Preconventional Level, is where the reasoning is childlike and the child shows very minimal or no understanding of social conventions and rules. Rules are justified by authorities, and are seen as being external to the person. Moral reasoning is determined by an egocentric nature. At the Conventional Level, an understanding of the conventions of society predicts reasoning. A knowledge of the necessity to abide by these conventions maintains social contracts. At the Post Conventional Level, society’s conventions and rules may be changed or overruled if they conflict with personal, moral and ethical principles.

Kohlberg developed these six stages of moral development through various interviews and studies that he conducted with a range of selected individuals. Kohlberg used these Moral Judgement Interviews, and scored participants on their verbal rationale and moral judgements for a particular hypothetical scenario (Narvaez 2002). However, in later in-depth studies conducted by Walker Henning and Krettanauer (2000),...