Moral Development Theories

Compare and contrast two theories of child development

Moral development

Moral development is the understanding of what 's right and what 's wrong . This is what is needed in life to make the right decisions in life the moral development is based on child 's experiences and environment . The theorist that I have chosen is Piaget and Kohlberg theory’s . Jean Piaget was the first psychologist to suggest a theory of moral development .He believed that there was three stages the children go through to make moral development. He indicates that moral development, similar to cognitive development, takes place through-out stages (Piaget, 1932).

Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) agreed with Piaget 's (1932) theory of moral development

According to Piaget development comes from actions and people construct and reconstruct their knowledge (Piaget date assessed 9/5/15)

Piaget has three stages ,the first stage is aged at under 5 years old and is called pre moral stage /moral realism which in this stage the children have got a clear side of what 's right and what 's wrong .They also believe that rules are not understood so can’t judge those who broke them. Also they tend to trust the adults a bit more and they don’t try judge the adults. This links to Kohlberg first stage of his theory which is aimed at a bit higher up in age but it is split up into three levels but 6 stages level 1 is called pre-conventional reasoning has the first 2 stages called stage 1 Heteronomous morality stage 2 Individualism which this is what he thinks happens at this level .He believes that moral behaviour is tied to punishment which mean that the children believe that rules are fixed and absolute which agrees with piaget. with the second stage means personal needs, treat everyone the same also it means, children account for individual points of view and judge actions based on how they serve individual

The children also learn that the rules can be changed and they see how the world is like through other people’s eyes. They are able to accept that they can be more than one right answer. They also believe like Kohlberg stage 1 theory of the punishment is an act of wrong behaviour. Kohlberg second level which is conventional morality which is split into stage 3 and 4 . Stage 3 is called interpersonal relationships which is often referred to when the adults say good boy and good girl ,also in this stage the children who are now usually starting their teens ad they can see morality as more than simple deals. In this stage as well the children are focused on living up the social expectation which and roles from family and other relationships . Good behaviour means they will have good motives and interpersonal feelings such as love and empathy trust and concerns for others that they make relationships with. Stage 4 gives the same response as his stage 1 the similarity is that they both think that if you do something wrong you are breaking the law. The differences between stage 4 and 1 is that the child/adolescent can deliberate the answers now for when they were in stage 1 when they couldn’t explain . Education is a good example for this with their rules and