Kohlberg

Lawrence Kohlberg (October 25, 1927 – January 19, 1987) was an American psychologist best known for his theory of stages of moral development. Two ideas: 1. Moral development. What one should or should not do. He suggested that children proceed through various stages of moral understanding. Their educational situations are influenced by their stage of moral development. Teachers must understand these stages in order to understand. Kohlberg’s three levels of moral development (each with with stages) are: a. Pre-conventional i. Obedience and punishment orientation ii. Instrumental orientation b. Conventional i. Good boy, nice girl orientation. Students want praise and respond accordingly. ii. Law-and-order orientation. Some rules are negotiable and some rules are not negotiable. c. Post-conventional i. Social-contract orientation. Moral choices respond to social relationships and the needs or situations of friends. ii. Universal-ethical principles orientation. Working towards peace, justice and altruistic values. He served as a professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Chicago and at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Even though it was considered unusual in his era, he decided to study the topic of moral judgment, extending Jean Piaget's account of children's moral development from twenty-five years earlier.^[1] In fact, it took Kohlberg five years before he was able to publish an article based on his views.^[1] Kohlberg's work reflected and extended not only Piaget's findings but also the theories of philosophers George Herbert Mead and James Mark Baldwin.^[2] At the same time he was creating a new field within psychology: "moral development". In an empirical study using six criteria, such as citations and recognition, Kohlberg was found to be the 30th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.^[3] From Wikipedia (Full Wikipedia article)